When the Horizon Bleeds
by Mirrorion
Summary: To her, love was love, no matter for whom it was harbored. Linda/L
1. Chapter 1

_a/n: This is not a story about pedophilia. This is not a story about non-consensual intercourse. It's not even that romantic. But I did decide to write this story to convey a message, one of both beauty and the crass truths that dwell within us all as we declare in one voice that we are human beings. This was started during a very hard time in my life, and it has special meaning. Maybe it can have special meaning for you as well. The story is rated M for certain themes portrayed in this piece. Please, enjoy yourself. I appreciate feedback of all kinds. _

_I own nothing._

**When The Horizon Bleeds**

In Linda's humble opinion, they each painted a picture using different utensils. Sometimes songs and drawings went hand in hand, for they both were divine tools of creation depicting something, anything. Math, art, music, the lines between the mediums blurred the more she counted her days among the living. She was fine with this, welcomed each individual's way of expression, accepted their differences and was immensely grateful when the same was granted for her.

However rare that was.

Her tragic past was not a commodity, and certainly not unique among her breed of creatures. Each child had their own secrets to covet and obsess over during numerous sleepless nights when their books had closed and all was left for company besides empty textual technicalities were the thunder and lightning, mocking their cataclysms that had landed them all at Wammy's. Murdered parents, raped parents, murdered and raped parents, abusive parents, neglectful parents. Battered babies, battered children, fists from their birth givers' mouths turned flesh and bruised raw with their own baby's blood. And she always used the term 'baby' loosely, and applied her own inventive definition of them. Babies were often considered literal infants, newborns who hadn't an actual care in the world, writhing gasping things that flailed and cried for a teat to suck on, not much else. They were adored though by people worldwide, the little humans. To Linda however, a baby could be of any age; was someone young, someone unexposed, puerile. And while perhaps not completely innocent, they bled their rules of blind optimism in a constant flow of pristine bounty.

As one can imagine, there weren't very many babies at Wammy's House.

Everyday though, she was called a baby by her peers. It was by her indulgent rationalization that she learned to transform it from an insult into a compliment. It didn't mean she was stupid or naïve,

Linda knew the secrets behind their bitterness, the lines heavily drawn between each of them in competitive abhorrence, and yet she had never succumbed to such conventions herself. Her studies were highly valued, yes, but once she shut her books as the sun set in the distance behind rolling Nordic clouds, her pencil moved in a very different fashion. She drew everything. She always had. From random objects to random people. From important objects to important people. From smooth billowing emerald English fields to jagged rock formations. From notched scars to skin pale and silky as untouched snow. From sunsets to the people watching sunsets with the far off look in their eyes that she obsessed over but felt the ache in their hearts, whatever it stemmed from.

And when they moved, she never said a word. Any great artist would have inwardly, or even outwardly complained if their target was moving, for then the lines would be crooked, or the face would come out strangely, and the end result would be disastrous in their eyes. Linda could draw anything. She even welcomed movement. She drew kids playing soccer, and a few pencil flicks would portray the smear that people and objects obtain when they gain momentum. The crooked lines were fine, and so were the strange faces. The end result wasn't something she could necessarily be proud of, or show off to anybody else (lord knew there weren't many who appreciated her slight of hand anyway), but when the days died down into something intimate between her consciousness and her cute little soul, she would share her work with herself, the only true friend she had within the confines of the orphanage. She would giggle to herself as the whimsy and secret affection within her throbbing heart tickled each other mercilessly, tracing her fingers lightly along the shaded regions of her subject's features so the graphite wouldn't smudge too much. Here, and only here in her convenient sketchbook could she really get to know these people, these children who, while they didn't mercilessly taunt her or make fun of her like some of what they considered the lower class students, she was somewhat invisible to them. When she played soccer with them, they never passed to her. When they worked in groups in their classes, her opinions were hardly ever accounted for. Up and down the hallways and in the cafeteria, she remained a ghost.

A happy, loving, lonely ghost.

Every once in a while though, those clairvoyant types, as she liked to call them, saw her as they emerged from their monotonous stressful mold of becoming something so close and yet so out of reach.

She was only five years old. Linda sat on the steps outside one hot summer evening, ignoring the flies and mosquitoes that lapped hungrily at the honey sweat sliding delicately down the side of her temple, sketching away at an apple tree whose blossoms hadn't fallen like the rest had so long ago. The shadow of an older student hovered behind her, eclipsing the light that had fallen pleasantly upon Linda's back until then. She noticed her of course, glancing sideways, and yet she didn't stop drawing.

"That's beautiful."

Her strokes ceased. Linda craned her neck and looked behind her. Melusine, age nine gazed down at her sharply, scrutinizing the works on the page of sketch paper.

"You're not going to say thank you?" The older student said, raising an eyebrow, as if slightly insulted that Linda didn't immediately start kissing the tips of her sneakers.

"Thank you." Linda said, hardly faltering. "I'm not used to compliments on my work is all. Please forgive me."

"What are you, six? Seven?"

To anyone else outside the compound, the words slithered out from between Melusine's lips like an insult. But that's how it was at Wammy's. A simple question sounded like an accusation. Linda took it as it was.

"Five, actually." She replied.

Melusine tilted her head, dissecting the younger girl's surface pieces, trying to figure out whatever motive there was, before turning to leave. "Keep drawing." Was all she said in her wake.

Linda didn't need to be told twice.

Her room, once shared with another young girl who soon demanded to have a different roommate due to the large amount of mess created by Linda's artworks, became her sanctuary of sleep and storage. From there her discoveries grew to unimaginable heights. As the next year passed, she took the criticism from her teachers and kept it in her pocket, but never took it like the arrows to her soul they were meant to be to kick start that academic vigor so viciously alive in the other students. She just wanted to draw. And her passion was born right then and there, in that room, in that orphanage, in her own little world that blossomed with so many different possibilities that she could never keep herself from having a delicate smile plastered permanently across the thin pinkish plane of her lips.

Another year passed. Linda came across the most puzzling and miraculous of things and people, cherished each and every one of them for their individuality and unique prowess. Sketchbook after sketchbook filled up dramatically, some pages dumped with random drawings, other's full portraits with vast detail to rival many of the century's greatest artists, though she remained oblivious to such a striking comparison. She just loved to draw, and carved her craft as others craved math problems and literature essays. She drew so much that it became a second nature to her, much like blinking, or breathing.

One day, it seemed like she breathed too much perhaps, so to speak.

Study hall was always her favorite time. Everyone was engrossed in their studies and her visibility to their notice went down even further. Without even focusing on this particular person, she drew, the lines flying across the grainy paper like experienced doves taking flight. At the time it felt like she didn't need to know their names, just their faces she found so important and worthy of being added to her mental library, to observe and remember and cherish until the end of time. The room was grand, tall pillars of clean white marble overlooking several chairs and tables filled erratically with many students cramming for their next exams. Her feet swept in an idiosyncratic fashion over the soft shag rug, toes occasionally gripping the crimson fibers as her hand swept against the pages in masterful motions. But with all of her attention being paid to her piece, she failed to notice her current subject loudly slam down his reading material and march silently yet ominously over to her table. Over the shiny grayish black of her graphite sketch were a pair of angry azure stones glinting with annoyance. Linda's sharp eyes took in all the detail they could of those intense irises before succumbing to the startled brook of fear that began to trickle steadily through the nerves in her spine. She gulped.

"Did I say you could draw me?" He said, demanding the answer in such a way that she knew it would be the end of her if she didn't render it.

Linda's eyes flickered, darting all over his features, from his sharp Caucasian facial contours to the sun silk color of his luxurious hair. He bent over her sitting form, formidable, omnipotent, vividly aggravated.

"N-no, I suppose not." She replied, her voice trembling slightly. What on earth was he so angry about? Nobody hardly ever noticed her, much less minded when she drew them.

"You're not even going to say sorry, are you?" He said, his upper lip curving into a slightly disgusted sneer of disapproval.

_Sorry for what?_

In a flash the boy tore the sketch of his dignified face out of her book and ripped it to pieces. Her mouth contorted in shock, eyes wide and jaw slackened. This had never happened to her before, and her brain struggled to understand. He left the pieces in front of her, looking angry, nettled, but she could see it in his face that despite his ghastly display of hostility, he did not do it to be vindictive or cruel. She had hit one of his triggers was all. The rationalization soothed the impact of her stupor, and she fought a kind smile nudging the muscles of her mouth. Not saying another word, he stomped back to his seat, picking up a rather thick book and promptly hiding his face behind its broadness. Linda looked back down at the pieces the boy had shredded, picking them up gingerly. Despite how dismayed she had been when he tore the drawing up, she found she didn't feel a sense of loss from the shredded work, or anger towards him for what he did. Perhaps it was the trust in her own hands to make another one of this fascinating boy and colorful emotions, only next time she would have to be far more inconspicuous.

"Do you have one of me in there?"

A soft but direct voice came from behind her, and she immediately recognized his face the moment she turned to stare at him. He gazed back at her, his beryl eyes meeting her own dark hazels, peering out from a downy shade of dark auburn red.

Without flipping through her sketchbook, she smiled gently. "Yes, I do."

He shrugged. "Some people don't like being drawn without permission." His eyes darted in the sunflower haired boy's direction.

Linda silently agreed. She had learned something very important today.

"Well, does it offend you too?" She asked.

He sat down in the chair opposite from her own, not answering her question. "May I see?"

Linda glanced down at her sketchbook, frowning in slight surprise. "You actually want to see my drawings?"

He simply stared at her, in a way saying 'did I stutter?', and so she obliged, suddenly feeling nervous at the prospect of letting another individual see her most private thoughts and impressions of those who surrounded her. In a way it was almost like she was letting someone read her diary, and yet how could she refuse when all of her entries were of other people?

The scarlet haired boy flipped through the pages gently, yet the look on his face was unperturbed and composed. "Where's the one you did of me?"

"Oh, it's..." She took it from him, flipping it to the correct page. "Right here. I did it a long time ago..."

He stared at it for a long time, what seemed like minutes, and Linda curbed the nervousness at him judging her artwork by looking downwards and tapping her finger softly against the mahogany table.

"You even noticed the mole on my neck." He said suddenly, his voice laced with amusement.

The boy flipped it closed and handed it back to her. She expected him to give a critique of some form on the pieces, especially the one of himself, but it never came. And yet she got the feeling that what he said about the growth on the side of his slender neck was an acknowledgement of her acute perception. Not that she had any idea that her ability was a gift, but she felt strangely honored anyway to have this boy in particular view her work.

"What's your name?" Linda asked him, finding a new reason to learn these people's titles, whatever it was.

"Matt." He said simply, digging deep into his pocket and pulling out a gameboy, colorless and emitting quiet beeps from the video game soundtrack. "And that over there is Mello. He's kind of a jerk but..."

After the 'but', nothing came to redeem his claim of Mello being a jerk. Perhaps there was nothing to refute it at all. Either way, Matt slipped away as smoothly as he entered, leaving Linda to her thoughts. Matt and Mello. Were these two friends? Did they room together? Did they have one of those avante garde friendships she had heard so much about? They were an interesting pair, some of the only other children she had bothered learning the names of, and that in itself sent a strange feeling of connection to wash over her sensitive body. She examined her work of Matt one last time, squinting her eyes and spotting the telltale mole he had mentioned, studying the diminutive size and how she managed to shade such a small blemish with the smallest mechanical pencil she could find. In all honesty many other artists would have left such a supposedly marring feature out of his portrait, and yet she felt it would be untruthful to disregard it. And really, she liked it. She liked all flaws really, accepted them for what they were and treasured them, perhaps a bit too much. Linda looked out the dwarfing glass windows that overlooked the west part of the grounds, grass rich and green, and the sun that was slowly descending over the horizon. Casting one last glance at Mello, who looked so determined he may as well be sitting there all through the night, she decided to retire, vowing to get another portrait of Mello, one that included his scars, his creases, and that fascinating cross that dangled gracefully at the center of his sternum as well.

Linda furiously spent her endless fantastical days cooped up in her own little world. Her test scores were noticeable, phenomenal sometimes, and yet she paid no attention to the numbers that were announced at the end of each week, remaining in fourth sometimes fifth place much to her apathy. Eventually her hair got so long it became a nuisance, always titillating her nose and obstructing her eyes, but it wasn't yet long enough to be put into a much more modest pony tail, and so she tucked them up on the top of her oval head in two pigtails, keeping them there stubbornly no matter how stupid the other children said they looked.

When the plumbago tips of her utensils failed to satisfy her one day, she set out in search of the tools she would need to create that colored art she had admired for so long. A wraith in the form of a precious young girl, she searched every broom closet and professor's lounge until she found acrylic paints, vibrant, smelling of synthetic color after it dried into thick unmoving plastic. But when she painted a rose, strangely enough it smelled like a rose. The range of her tapestries grew more each passing day. Her sleep suffered horribly, for the speed of her brush never wavered until the wee hours past midnight, and only when her hand began to tremble from lack of rest did she climb into her bed, a cluttered disorder consisting of paintings, drawings, and even dried clay which she attempted to sculpt, to drift into a meager three hours of sleep before classes began. But even then, she did not regret any of it. It gave her peace of mind to spend that much time with herself, honing and loving her endowment to see things that other people didn't, and she didn't mind seeing the sunrise, plumed with the gentle sound of mourning birds chirping away in the forest surrounding the orphanage.

Linda clung to the beauty around her with iron arms; for some reason, she found she could no longer believe the horrors of the world. And so she didn't.

Despite her loneliness she remained a cheerful soul, beautifully down to earth and eager to spend her time both alone and in the company of the other children during the rare times they actually acknowledged her existence. The more time that passed she observed her self induced isolation from her peers, how they constantly talked about their studies and assignments, academics flowing so headily within them that at times she wondered if this...enterprise of becoming the replacement for the world's greatest detective was slowly but surely driving them all insane.

Unsaid rumors of her warmth soon began to spread steadily throughout their tiny emulous society, and she began to attract them with her down to earth nature, her gentle sparks of kindness, so rare given their origins and present circumstances. Some of them admired her sentimental essence, while others rejected it as weakness, which in the long run made little affect on her. She never consciously appointed herself as the counselor for these kids, but it gave her a bizarre sense of purpose. If she wasn't focused enough on the prize everyone else held so dear, then perhaps she could help them explore why they wanted this particular prize so badly, investigate why they so eagerly abandoned their individuality to become something they probably weren't.

Like the rest of them, she was a detective, sifting through people's emotional baggage instead of the elusive hints left behind by various serial killers and thieves. What was so bizarre about it was that it didn't cause her any sort of harm, or cost her effort. It seeped effortlessly from her caring form, which didn't seem to harbor jealousy or hatred, only an untouchable understanding that never wilted like it should have. Wammy's was often talked about like it was the light in people's lives, like it was giving these children a brighter and better future, but she knew better. It was also a place of darkness and oppression, where people's individuality was swallowed up by the greater purpose:

Becoming L.

L this and L that. The single letter held so much meaning all throughout the house, and though aware, she remained disinterested at heart.

At first.

They were an army to this entity, pawns waiting hungrily to become the kingly force of justice within a world in turmoil, and their job was to solve the turmoil. Such a prospect seemed to fit Linda's desires, and yet she wondered at least once every day who the one carrying the title of L was, and how they were making the world a better place. How could a faceless letter be doing good in the world, she secretly demanded an answer to that.

However, disinterest to the truest degree could never be won by her lovesome ways, and belonged to Near, the successor who had the highest grade point average of them all without even trying. The boy carried neutrality within his being, exuded it, like both an intense virtue and vice. In the face of danger he would remain unmoved, but as such amidst the ways of love and happiness. He hardly ever talked, and when he did, there was no inherent contempt towards interaction, but there was something wrong in the depths of his eyes, and being respectful as she was, Linda never prodded the guaranteed mysterious and hurtful past of the young genius, only a year younger than her own aging stature.

At the time, she had developed a fascination with geometric shapes, and sought to draw them. Near's dice were an excellent subject, and he had no objection when she asked to draw his impeccable construction of stacked dotted cubes. Naturally she asked if she could draw him as well, and he seemed even less excited about that to the point where she figured somewhere beneath his naturally indifferent facade he truly didn't want her to. The playroom was intended for the youngest children, filled with stuffed animals and hard robot action figures meant for the littlest geniuses to chew on. But as she knew so well, age didn't matter at Wammy's, and so many kids had aged fifty years the night they were removed from whatever situation they faced before their placement in the orphanage.

The two of them sat in silence, the only music serenading each other's company Linda's masterful pencil scraping away at the sketch paper and the delicate clacking sound of dice being heaped together by precise pale fingers. Her three dimensional squares matched the picture before her perfectly, and defying his unspoken request, she could not help but do a simple quick sketch of him as well, for his ashen features were as intriguing as they were perplexing. She smiled in contentment; what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"Near?" She quietly cut through the silence, hesitance evident in her soft voice.

He didn't answer, but a very subtle glance made her feel acknowledged. She never minded that. Everyone had different ways of communicating, some more boisterous than others, Near among the more quiet subjects she had come across.

"Do you want to become L?" asked Linda.

"Why do you ask." He replied, his downward inflected question laced with natural suspicion. What made him the perfect detective was how he hungered for people's motives, no matter how unconcerned he seemed.

"Well look around." She said, propping her head against a closed fist leaning on her folded knees. "Everyone here is desperate to become him, or her. It's all anyone ever thinks about. Is that all you think about as well?"

"Don't you?" Near asked.

She stared at him for but an instant and smiled.

"You're avoiding the question, Near."

An elusive twitch graced his lips for but an instant before the same old stony expression took its familiar place in its wake. Almost as if to say, 'well played'. "I'm indifferent. My intelligence outstrips everyone else in the orphanage, and I suppose that makes me superior to them in a sense. But I'll be honest, I feel no satisfaction from such a truth."

Linda fell silent for a few moments, contemplating the simplicity of his words, the blatant concoction of accuracy polished like arrows from between his youthful lips.

"What is he like, I wonder." She said gently, haphazardly, as though she would have preferred that no one hear the utterance, of course if that were true she should not have said it in Near's vicinity.

"L, you mean?"

She nodded.

"Everyone is curious about it." He said nonchalantly, as if to emphasize how above the hype around the individual they were all supposed to succeed he was, inadvertently denying any fascination of his own he may have had. He then left his construction of dice in favor of a domino set. "We'll find out soon, however."

"Oh?" She said, eyebrows raising and disappearing under her silky brunette bangs.

"Roger says he will be paying us all a visit."

Linda looked downward, not at anything in particular, and contemplated this. It was odd for her to hear any reference to L as if he were a real person. His persona had been warped and idolized into something intangible. Her brow creased and her bottom lip tucked itself under her top row of teeth, begging to be chewed on as she considered Near's news. He spoke of everyone's fixation on the detective as if it were a deficiency within them, an immature bout of blind admiration, and while she could not argue with her slightly younger pale counterpart, she could not help but admit a certain fascination of her own with this detective they all sought to be. But if he was telling the truth (and Near telling a lie had a very low percentage of ever happening in the absence of true gain), she could finally answer the questions that had been steadily building up within the recesses of her mind about this man, who eluded her senses and imagination in every way.

Silence was never an unwelcome thing among their kind. It meant deep thinking, something more valued among anything else. Until Near paused, his unfathomable eyes settling upon her sketchbook, which she had carelessly rested face up on top of her feet.

"I never said you could draw me." He said, his boyish voice taking on a strangely deep tenor.

Linda blinked once, but her brow furrowed at his claim. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Absolutely nothing." He replied flippantly. Rising, he stared down at her with an inexplicable expression whilst he twirled an ivory ringlet between his fingers. "Can't say I appreciate it though."

"I'm sorry, Near." Linda said, this time quite genuine.

He gazed at her profoundly, the depth of his thought process evident even to her slightly superficial perception, and she felt naked beneath his line of sight. The mysteries within his mind were under a thick padlock, the key nowhere to be found, but from her, the answers flowed from her flickering eyes and uncertain mouth, the muscles of her tense features giving her away completely.

"He may enjoy it though. He can be quite vain."

Before she even had the chance to ask who he was talking about specifically, he began to adjourn out of the room, the soft padding sound of his socks against the floor an eerie display of evidence of his presence.

~ o ~

_There are anchors in my heart. I can feel them, and yet I still feel like I'm flying. Life is too wonderful not to live to the fullest, and I try in futile attempts to capture it in the strokes of my fingers, my wrist, my hand believed to so talented. My doubts flow down the stream and colors are so bright. I embrace it, and yet I cannot help but question it. Why am I blessed with such bliss while the ones around me suffer, their jaded eyes glazed over with a sadness I cannot fathom, and yet it seems so familiar. I don't understand. But I long to. Perhaps the answers lie not within them, but within me. _

_Who am I? _


	2. Chapter 2

_a/n: I have lowered the rating to T, since besides the intensely provocative theme there is nothing else that would warrant an 'M' rating. _

~o~

The prospect of his presence stirred a hungry excitement throughout the orphanage, and those who barely uttered a word were suddenly talking animatedly about the sorts of things they wanted to ask him. Even Near, who had spoken so adamantly (sort of) about how he was above such exhilaration, seemed to be less withdrawn, throwing complimentary and courteous wordless glances everywhere much to Linda's mild delight. And then there were those who were subdued by such realities. Matt had retreated to an even more absorbed state when it came to his hand held gaming systems, and Mello silenced himself, limiting his emission of sounds to the clicking sound of his teeth cracking off pieces of various chocolate bars. She would have liked to say that she had been unchanged by L's arrival, but that would have been a bold faced lie, and she had never liked being deceptive, even if it was to herself. So when the children crowded themselves in the windows to see the ultimate genius step out of the vehicle he had been delivered in, Linda actually hid, shying away from such a drastic change in the orphanage's rhythm and concealing herself in her room, despite the fact that it was so cluttered and unkempt, therefore she hardly ever liked spending time there if she wasn't sleeping. She sat with her knees curled up to her chest on a small clean spot on her bed, listening to the mayhem that spread with eager inferno through the modest mansion, the screams of excruciatingly beguiling joy like melodious knives to her ear.

She wondered why she was hiding, why she was spending this allegedly glorious moment in the shadows listening while everyone else gathered in mirth. She did admit, it was very strange for her to see her peers jump at the chance to talk to the detective when this man was unwittingly (or otherwise..) the one who drove them so close to lunacy from the studying and inferiority complexes. But that wasn't quite the reason why she felt so reclusive in light of the event. Like the emotional pioneer she was, she decided to deduce her feelings and actions as an outlet for her anxiety, though it impressed her how it turned out she did feel anything at all for this person who wasn't even a person until he was apparently striding through the halls of the orphanage so unlike the ghostly legend he had always seemed.

Her pencil and paper laid neglected for the first time since before she learned how to draw.

The night once again swallowed another day before she could adjust to the savagely fast passing of time. The calamitous air of the orphanage had died down considerably, but even with that in mind she opened and closed the door to her room quietly, as if she didn't want to further disturb this new alien feeling that had settled upon her home. Evenings were almost always quiet, even with galvanic occurrences, for hardly anything save for volcanoes and hurricanes would ever interrupt the children's desire to study, and so far neither of those had ever happened. The library harbored a droning sound of reposeful murmurs; it was obvious they would not be able to pull all nighters like they always desired. The sun went down, and a cool fresh emptiness descended upon the mansion. Outside the windows lining the big wide corridors, the darkness engulfed the trees and the freshly cut lawn of green grass, enveloping it with a blue mantle which twinkled vaguely as fireflies swooped in and out of sight.

_It's like I'm walking in a dream_

Her purpose for roving so late was unclear, mostly to herself. Perhaps she was searching for L, to finally get her glimpse at him without being crowded by other people also ravenous for their gazes to settle on his unreal form. Perhaps she was going stir crazy for the first time in her entire life since coming there, craving real adventure as opposed to the ones she painted so valiantly with her brush. There was a terrace that overlooked the grass outside, not high up as a balcony would be, but it was peaceful and quiet, and she only dared to go there when there was nobody there already. It seemed like the kind of place that would purposely reach down and surface one's thoughts. It was perfect, it was safe for a kind of night like this, where she was unsure about herself all of a sudden. She needed order.

And in no time, her feelings were thrown asunder.

Her mind, so adept at description after long hours of gathering everything down the smallest details about a person's appearance, immediately began taking note of this person, even though they were just above a dark silhouette eclipsing and even darker backdrop. However her emotions were rattled, nettled even, at finding that someone already had the same desire as she to go to the terrace. His face was chiseled in a distinct masculine carving, but his skin was smoother than most girls she knew, young or otherwise. It looked distantly into the brisk night air, probably counting the few stars that peeked out from behind the thick blanket of clouds. He was striking, even at this distance and beneath the gleam of scarce light. Linda dissected him gently, in that caring tender way she became so well known for, eyes following the crooked contours of his curvature, the way his feet and legs stood so awkwardly far apart, how his hands were immersed deeply into the pockets of his faded jeans, how his hair looked like it had never been combed in his life (Linda absentmindedly ran a finger through her own tangled locks, suddenly wondering whether or not having such frizzy hair was actually too bad).

Deep down she knew who it was all along, but so enraptured by her observations of him, she never spoke his name even in the recesses of her mind as she finally looked upon him so privately.

"Yes?"

She inwardly gasped.

"Did you want something?"

And she couldn't bring herself to speak. Inside her throat her voice box twisted and tangled, the thought of sound escaping nothing but a dream. He turned toward her, bringing one hand out of his pocket and scratching the corner of his mouth with a long gnarled ashen finger.

"You've been standing there for quite some time...I figured if you continued to say nothing, I would instigate you instead."

Linda tilted her head in shy curiosity, noticing the way his voice lilted gently in a whimsical fashion, not aggressive or hostile or even _annoyed _in any sense, but not quite kind either. Already she felt acknowledged in a way she never had before, like he was as curious about her as she was about him. It was a most remarkable feeling, and it made her intestines writhe and squeeze in electric discomfort. She tensed once more as the sound of his bare feet gently stepped against the tile, for he walked in her direction, stopping to stare at her more carefully, and even with his awful posture he still loomed over her. Finally, she got a good look at his face, skin as pale as Near's, but even more emphasized because of the thick raven locks framing his visage. His eyes were abysmal pools of black due to his disturbingly dilated pupils, but she looked closer and they were surrounded by the faintest ring of deep ocean blue. She bit her lip as a tiny impulse of pleasure traveled up her spine. She enjoyed these kinds of peculiarities immensely, and he had so, _so _many of them. She was suddenly severely aware of the lack of pencil and paper in her hands. How could she have forgotten-

"You're Linda." L said, his tone masking any surprise, wonder, or captivation with the fact. It was a simple declaration, nothing more.

"...Yes." She replied, finally finding her voice, and to her dismay it was shaking.

"You are also number four." He said, this time with a strange mysticism flowing through his tenor. He suddenly crouched down, cutting his size in half so that they were now the same height. His thumb threatened to be swallowed by his mouth as it ran over the plane of his lips again and again, sometimes grazing his teeth. "Very interesting...what is your craft?"

"M-my craft..." She repeated dumbly, but she was so shaken she could not bring herself to care.

"Do you enjoy playing video games? Puzzles? Singing? Dancing?" He pressed.

"I suppose...but I prefer to draw."

His eyes flickered with something she could have sworn was a tiny hint of exhilaration. "Right, right."

She found his replies to be very cryptic and strange, as though his questions were nothing but bait for her to provide the answer he probably already knew, searching perceptively for the doorways to her inner thoughts, perhaps even her soul, while she was busy biting his lures. It was a foreign feeling really, she had never been looked upon as especially interesting until now, and here he was, probing her. It wasn't that he was threatening...just, incredibly invasive. It was a trait that everybody at Wammy's House possessed, but it was trademarked by the strange man before her.

"And yet you're without the materials which your craft cannot be done without." L said, his eyes glancing but once to her empty hands.

"They're in my room."

"_He may enjoy it though. He can be quite vain."_

"Is that so..." He murmured gently.

"I know it's late..." She started, despite noticing the bruised flesh beneath his eyes from lack of sleep. "But may I draw you?"

"Of course." said L, far more enthusiastically than she would have ever thought possible. He stood up, and she marveled at how her own stature only measured up to his hips. His strides were long, and her gait struggled to keep up with him. It was the strangest feeling she had ever experienced; he must have been used to children, or even better, a child trapped in the body of an adult. Hands once again trapped in his pockets, they both climbed the stairs and adjourned in the direction of her room, which she had abruptly remembered had been the remnants of a tornado for a year.

"_Wait!_" She said, perhaps a bit too loudly given the hour. He stopped, and stared at her with an expression of surprise.

"My...room is filthy. You can barely walk through it." She said softly, hanging her head in slight shame. It was strange to feel embarrassment over something such as a dirty room...it had never happened before. Then again, up until then no one had ever wanted to be in her room.

To which he merely shrugged. "I'm sure it's fine."

They arrived at her door, and with some trepidation she opened it forcefully, for there was a rather large pile of crumbled paper behind it. Reaching in front of him, she flipped on the light switch on, illuminating her private space and the disheveled mess it held.

"My room put this place to shame." L said simply. "It eventually came to the point where I wasn't allowed to have anything in my room at all. Let us hope that doesn't happen to you."

Stepping carefully through the skinny path Linda herself had carved through the clutter, he glanced back at her. "Shall we?"

"O-okay." She said, crawling past him on her bed while he made a spot on the rather precarious corner of her bed. He pulled his knees close to his chest and placed his hands on top of them. Linda said nothing about his strange way of sitting, though she found it rather peculiar since she only took the fetal position when she was feeling immensely thoughtful, or the rare times when she was sad. Was he thoughtful all the time? Was he sad all the time? It made her wonder. Willing her hands to stop shaking and retain their composure, she sharpened her pencil, but then paused, pondering whether or not graphite was the best medium to draw him in.

"I'm here for a week." L said, breaking the silence and reading the very thoughts behind her hesitation. "But after that, I will be gone for three years. Maybe after tonight you should try and catch me again if you're having problems deciding which media you prefer."

Linda stared at him for an instant before smiling, sincere and warm. Her conviction slowly began to return. "Good idea. Then graphite will be fine for tonight."

She drew the shape of his head, a slender oval that, on second thought, was more of an upside down egg. His neck was svelte and long, with a several subtle veins lining his muscles beneath thin translucent skin that was very, very hard to shade even with the dramatic lighting. His clothes, fingers and toes were especially fun to draw. The crooked digits were jagged, protruding from his skin in strange ways that she tried her hardest to portray properly on paper. The clothes hung on his skin deceptively, their loose fit hiding his real physique.

"How long have you spent at Wammy's House, Linda?"

"I came around my fifth birthday." She replied softly. Her pencil began to shade lightly to make it seem like she was still drawing, but he had a strange power in his voice, demanding attention.

"Linda's a rather interesting alias in the sense that it is not very peculiar at all."

She shrugged. "It's not an alias, actually."

His stare became rather critical, almost grim. "That isn't something I consider wise."

"Perhaps not..." She said, swallowing audibly. "I just like my name, thats all. I didn't want to change it."

"Most fascinating." He mumbled, reaching to put his thumb against the corner of his mouth.

"Please, put your hand down." She said hurriedly, reprimanding her tone right after. "I'm sorry...I want it come out well, and I cant do that if you move around too much."

He nodded in acknowledgment, and remained unmoving. But he did not stay quiet, something that was also very odd to her, since she was far too used to drawing in blessed silence. "I can tell already you're very different from the others."

"The other orphans?" She asked, glancing back and forth between the thin curve of his pale lips and the page. They were small, narrow strips of flesh that spouted such entrancing things. There was no doubt that she liked L, from his prominent quirks to the way he addressed and regarded her so naturally. "Why do you say that?"

"The first reason being the most obvious, you weren't overly excited to see me, let alone be granted the privilege to spend extended amounts of time in my presence. In fact, I believe you were the only one absent upon my arrival."

Linda blushed, but said nothing. Just sketched away. His hair...and eyes for that matter, were so _so _black.

"But what lies beyond the normal shyness is what I thought was the most curious. You lack any sort of competitive nature. It's evident you aren't driven by the prospect of becoming a serious successor; you seem perfectly happy and well adjusted where you are. So rare..."

He trailed off in a thoughtful trance, before coming back with something that struck her even more.

"And you're so very kind."

"...Thank you, I suppose." She responded quietly, pulling the portrait closer to her body so she had an excuse to look down, hiding the delicate blush spreading steadily across her freckled face.

"It's not a very common attribute, you know." He said, so sure of himself, and rightfully so.

"It's not?"

"Not in the slightest. Even here, where I'm lavished with the praise of all the children who admire me and seek to eventually become me, I know for a fact that none of them are very nice." The candor was beautiful, yet startling. So honest and true, brutally so.

"Mmm..." Linda hummed delicately.

"You hesitate to agree with me." And he nearly sounded affronted.

"It's not that I disagree with you, I just don't hold it against them."

He went quiet for some time, for which Linda was grateful. In the nick of time she was able to shade the tiny shadows decorating his lips and ears. She tried to stay away from examining his eyes prematurely, something she always avoided before she was done with a drawing. Each minute was valuable, even though she had forgotten the very passage of time anyway. The seconds ticked away like the precious grains of sand in an hourglass, and each syllable he spoke was like something unbearably fresh, like frozen mountain winds.

"I'm almost done..." She said, using the tip of her finger to smooth the shadows together, giving them a richer consistency.

He craned his neck forward, owlish eyes bulging slightly, imploring her to show the results. And with a wad of anxiety in her belly, she handed him her notebook, watching with a wavering gaze as he held it by the coil bindings as though it had a deadly disease he was not interested in catching. She watched as he searched it with a captious edge, praying for...something she didn't quite know. Approval maybe. But she knew that the kind of approval he'd give would not be orthodox.

L lifted his head above the sketchpad he held with four fingers to speak to her, his voice laced with curiosity. "Do I really have crow's feet?"

Holding her breath at the inquiry, she shakily nodded, trusting her own ability to see the tiny crevices in anyone's face more than anything.

"And at seventeen. Pity." He handed it back to her, gazing at her in that incursive way of his, but she remained composed under his regard, possibly even comfortable to some degree.

"My _goodness..._" She said suddenly as she glanced at her digital clock reading the time as four in the morning. The thing ran ten minutes slow, but that hardly seemed to matter as the wee hours of the morn began to inch steadily toward sunrise.

He looked in the same direction, interested in what made her react as such. "My, it is quite late I guess."

"I-I'm sorry, it's just that I have classes and-"

"Classes have been canceled at my request." L remarked simply. "My presence is cause for celebration, apparently. And even stranger, I am told the children study more when I make my visits. Peculiar, no?"

"Oh..." Linda finished lamely, suddenly unsure, certainty fading along with the afterglow of finishing what she already considered her best work yet. "If you don't mind me asking, why did you let me draw you?"

"Because I wanted to see whether or not you were as good as I heard, for the most part." He said from behind his thumb, which by then was being gnawed on thoroughly having the freedom to move around once more. "I take the time to get to know my successors in one way or another. This seemed appropriate."

"Aren't you tired?" Linda asked, coincidentally opening her mouth and letting loose a girlish sigh of a yawn.

"Not at all. I hardly ever sleep." He said, stretching his arms out in front and then behind him, a satisfying crack releasing from one of his shoulder blades. "But if you are, by all means get some rest."

She nodded tiredly, setting the precious drawing on her bedside table after carelessly sweeping the clutter upon it onto the floor. Crawling beneath her covers, L slid off the corner of her bed, mumbling something to himself about going to the kitchen and raiding the strawberry cheesecake in the refrigerator.

"L?" She called wearily after him, sleep quickly overtaking her, but she couldn't help but feel a tingle of contentment as his name finally slid off her tongue without sounding ghostly or impalpable.

He looked over his shoulder at her.

"Did you like my drawing?" She asked him, her head just barely hovering over her pillow.

"It's very perceptive. It is the first time I have ever been drawn, but I find that you flattered my flaws with the beauty of truth. Nothing is more poignant."

Her head touched her pillow, and her eyes began to droop. "Thank you..."

Nodding in return, he left her to dreams silky and sweet, and yet so mystifying.

~ o ~

_I dream of fields burning with pink fire, restless beneath skies of purple majesty. The birds are black and blue, the grass hot to the touch and yet so cold. Laying in the ferns, feeling their knife shapes graze my skin which sweats a freezing river, the heavens collapse as my abode crumbles. I have no home, and yet I wander without a listless sense of squandered heart I see so abundant in my kind. And which breed am I, I wonder as the chaos passes me by in beautiful colors arrayed in such violence and brutality. Even the watercolor blossoms of carnage cannot touch my conscience. My innocence is the fountain of youth in all of this, and yet it is my curse. Why can I relate to these people, and yet feel nothing for their plights? Why do their sorrows make me ache so much beneath my genuine, yet frostbitten smiles? What do they know about the depths of their sadness that I do not? Where is my sadness?_

_Why can't I remember?_


	3. Chapter 3

Though Linda was only asleep for a few measly hours, when the light woke her with a gentle prod of luminescence, she became conscious of a comforting warmth throughout her body. Her eyes hadn't opened yet, but a smile was already spreading itself across her delicate pink lips. She was tired...wasn't she? Childish limbs ached with fatigue, but she gazed out her window feeling something so new and untouched, and the sense of discovery gave her all the energy she would need today, she just knew it. Crumpled paper from a past failed work crunched under her small bare foot as she rolled out of bed, not bothering to make the covers she had twisted herself in during the night and soiled with an anxious sweat of bizarre dreams and elusive thoughts. It was still early, considering how only a few hours ago she sat with the renowned detective at the foot of her bed drawing his portrait. Pulling a faded pink tank top over her head, she glanced at the detailed finished product, even more stricken by her interpretation of L than she was in the dimness before dawn. Everything about him was extreme and striking, a dramatic air emitting from his very sun-starved skin. Always searching, always collecting and processing like a computer with flesh and clothes. He was even more bewitching to her now that the morning had given light to the things she had learned thus far about him. Her heart ached with a thirst for revelations for him, and thought she wasn't completely sure why, her lips curved into a knowing smile, for she had a week to quell her curiosity.

Before she left she grabbed a smaller notebook not carrying the precious portrait she had just drawn along with a dulled number two pencil, and ventured outside her room with stealth. Her clothes hung slackly on her skinny arms and legs, the jean shorts clinging to her jutting hip bones only by the assistance of a tightened belt. The smell in the air brought the spores of fresh pollen and floating cotton and she breathed in heftily through her nostrils. The fibers of her body seemed so tightly strung together that nothing could break her apart, and the feeling of such strength invigorated her. Outdoors, the air was thick, but the scent of freedom wafted through the heavy breezes ruffling the matted strands of her light auburn hair, and through the threads of the flowing tresses obscuring the view her eyes caught sight of people in the distance. Squinting, she saw someone in a white shirt topped with a scraggly crown of onyx crouching down below with three others surrounding him. They congregated at the edge of the woods, obviously engrossed by something fascinating, and she couldn't help but yearn to take part in such an activity. Involuntarily holding her sketchbook even tighter to her body, she stepped lightly as if she desired not to have been seen, but in the open clearing of the orphanage property it was impossible not to be spotted. Upon further investigation she saw hair of four different but familiar shades, the luminescent ash of Near, the corn silk gold of Mello, the scarlet rose of Matt, and last but certainly not least, the dead raven locks of L. They sat in the grass, L situated with his bottom just slightly above the green blades of vegetation. He appeared to be showing them something, perhaps a phenomenon of nature. Knowing L, she could hardly imagine what sort of object could hold all four geniuses attention so adamantly.

Near was the first to notice Linda's presence. His head turned in her direction once her dainty steps came within his keen earshot. Mello and Matt, absorbed in L's lecture, followed Near's example and stared at her, Matt seeming indifferent for the most part yet his eyes sparkled in familiarity and Mello narrowing his eyes, silently demanding why she was intruding on his time with the one whom he sought to be. L had stopped speaking, his heavy voice ceasing as he noticed his students' attention shifting to something else. Then he too turned to acknowledge her.

"Ah, we have a visitor." He said simply, eyes widening a fraction as invisible eyebrows rose further into his bangs.

"Sorry...am I interrupting?" Linda asked, her voice trembling slightly. Their gazes were ruthless and unwavering. Unnerving.

"Not at all. We were taking a walk and we came across something we all found most interesting, and I took the opportunity to talk about the subject which I'm sure occupies the minds of most of the children in the orphanage."

"What subject is that?" She asked slowly, coming to sit next to him, only to have Mello possessively move to take her spot. Nonetheless, she had stopped before both knees were able to touch the soft dewy lawn.

A dead bird lay on the ground.

"Death." L replied softly in response to the look of engorged shock upon her face.

Linda swallowed audibly, eyes following the contours of the deceased creature's mangled limbs and half lidded lifeless stare, feathers frayed with a few plucked out and askew from its body. One of its wigs had been torn asunder. It was hideous, and her heart wrenched painfully.

"W-why would you look at such a thing?" Her voice quivered.

"We're all here under many circumstances, most of which include death in some context." He said matter of factly, as if it were the most evident thing on the planet and he were bestowing the information to a truly ignorant human being.

His expression of indifference seemed to flicker gently as she turned to look up at him, eyes shining with a glassy luster as tears spurted slowly from tiny ducts.

But he continued. "Death is a natural occurrence. It is as, if not more common than birth."

"What we need to do..." Linda said breathlessly, inhaling shakily and quickly wiping the corners of her eyes with the baggy bottom of her shirt. Near, Mello, and Matt seemed confused, even startled by her reaction. "Is properly bury it."

Even L seemed perplexed, not to mention intrigued. "Bury it? You think it deserves a buriel?"

"Yes L, I do!" Linda exclaimed, sorrow filling her vocals.

Mello emitted a dismissive 'ch' sound, lips curling into a sneer of annoyance, and perhaps frustration that he didn't understand why she wanted to provide so much for the decaying corpse of a bird they had found earlier that morning. However, Near, Matt, and especially L regarded her with curiosity, his empty gaze suddenly shining with something mysterious and provocative. Something about her desire, her display of emotion had piqued his interest, but her attention once again focused on the mutilated red breasted robin before them, breathing in a hearty sniff through her nose.

"...Very well then, we will bury it." L said.

Near blinked. Matt raised his eyebrows in slight surprise. Mello spoke. "What? Why?"

"Well one, I'm sure we'd be doing Roger a favor by keeping his lawn clean."

Linda swore she could hear Mello's thoughts scream themselves into the briskness of the air: _like he doesn't have gamekeepers to do that for him. _

"And two..." L continued, "Linda has presented a very rare opportunity for us to take part of."

_What, exactly?_

Finalizing the situation, he stood, crooked stance natural as possible, and turned to the four of them. "Near and Matt, please go to the shed and fetch some shovels. Dig a small hole near the edge of the forest."

Near immediately started towards the shed with his robotic gait, Matt shrugging and following close behind. L pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Linda.

"Linda, will you please wrap the bird in this and bring it near the shed."

Mello's brow pinched together, questioning without words why he hadn't been ordered a task to do, a silent inquiry that was promptly ignored by L. Linda took the handkerchief and without touching the festering remains of the bird, wrapped it up in a loose bundle and began carrying it gingerly in the direction of the shed. It was light and brittle in her hands, the smell of decomposing skin and feathers reaching her nostrils in an unpleasant wave of foul odor, but she ignored it, walking alongside the awkward yet strangely expeditious nature of L's pace. When they reached their destination, Near and Matt had already dug the hole in the ground.

"Place the bird in the hole."

"I'm guessing you wont want your handkerchief back?" Linda asked.

"You're correct in your assumption."

She wanted to smile at that, but she didn't. The weight in her hands was far too gripping, and the feeling of it leaving her hands and touching the dirt of the bottom of the hole below her made her eyes yearn to spurt liquid once again.

"Mello." L said.

Mello's attention darted at the obscure genius. "What?"

"Would you please say some words before we fill in the hole?"

The blond boy paused, face creased in focus and consideration. "Why me?"

"You have roots in Catholicism. I figured you would have a prayer of some sort to send the creature's spirit on its way to the afterlife."

"Don't patronize me!" Mello said harshly, quickly containing himself despite the fact that his outburst had no affect on the even-minded L. After a pregnant suspension of time, one in which it seemed to stop entirely, he parted his lips.

"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be they name. Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory."

A brief silence ended the supplication. Humility seemed to wash over all of them in its own way according to the person.

"Amen." Mello finished quietly. "I'm sorry, I didn't know what else to say."

"Very good, kids." L said, businesslike, and dismissing Mello's apology. "Those with shovels, please fill in the hole."

Near and Matt silently complied, and Linda released a breath she didn't realize she was holding prisoner within her chest as the crumbs of dirt sprinkled over, and eventually covered the dead bird they had just laid to rest. Something about the entire predicament left her feeling cold and inwardly shivering with her blood frozen and congealing beneath the surface of her chilled skin. L said death was a natural event, a typical part of life, but even though she knew his words rang true with realist rationality she could not bring herself to accept it on such a nonchalant level. She could not, would not cut herself off from her emotions like that, and even though she didn't understand why, deep in her heart she knew that detachment wasn't an option for her. She was Linda, sweet Linda, the one who didn't talk a lot but talked enough to make someone feel welcome, who listened all the time to the sorrows of her classmates and would even provide such counsel for her teachers if they asked, who loved undeniably and indiscriminately.

_I don't want to forget how to love._

"Now, you may all adjourn where you wish. Today's lesson is over." L said, calm and seemingly reflective.

His three most accomplished successors glanced at each other before going their separate ways. Near headed back to the mansion, probably with the desire to sit in the children's room, while Mello and Matt stayed outside to go around the manor to the other yard where soccer and other organized sports were held. The morning was bleeding away in favor of an early afternoon, and more children were beginning to awake and stir within the orphanage. In the distance she could hear their voices of mirth and abandonment, wishing at that moment that she could share such bliss and free herself from this cruel awakening of pragmatic virtues too heartless for her doting nature.

"You have nothing to do, Linda?"

His voice cut through the air like a knife sinking with an aching pace into a stick of half frozen butter. She jumped slightly, remembering he was there, and she met his profound cryptic gaze with one of her own, one laced with worry and fearful discontent.

"The lesson I just gave bothers you immensely." He stated, words plain and simple. If she didn't know any better _(and perhaps she didn't) _he seemed truly unconcerned. And yet the way he looked at her, the undivided attention and the mentioning of any ghost of involvement at all, it had to mean something.

"Yes...I suppose it does." She replied somberly.

"In that case I will not go out of my way to persuade you to see my point."

"I see your point L..." Linda assured him. "I just...don't know how to conceptualize it properly. I don't know how to accept death as something so casual."

"Understandable. Most people don't." He said, bringing his thumb up to his mouth and grinding the fingernail between one of his teeth. "Though it's quite a required trait for those who wish to take my place. You must not be shocked, nor entirely moved by death."

"Then maybe..." She began quietly, conviction returning to her for but a moment. "...Maybe I'm not meant to take your place then."

There was a moment of silence, before L actually smiled thinly, a small curve of his thin lips, rare and already quiet coveted by her. "I appreciate your honesty and candor. And I must admit, you taught us all a valuable lesson in return."

"What's that?"

"Compassion."

She didn't reply straight away, reviewing her previous actions and putting together the pieces of her own lesson she involuntarily taught to the rest of them. It shocked her how he would notice something like that, especially when she remained receptive to the fact that there was probably little she had to offer four incredibly astute geniuses. Once again, L had unsurprisingly proven her wrong.

"Along with accepting death," L continued, voice muffled slightly as he began to chew on two fingers at once. "One must also retain their feelings for people on an empathic level. I've found it's a vital factor for a healthy human being."

"So...you _do _have empathy...?" She said, cursing the sound of surprise and how scornful it would sound to anybody else, and yet he found no insult in her words.

"Not much, but some."

"I think you have more than you think." Linda added offhandedly, the scenes of his gentle demeanor during her brief moments of tears during the burial playing like flashes of a film behind her eyelids.

"Oh? What's your reasoning?"

She shrugged. "Intuition, I suppose."

At that, he chuckled lowly, a quiet sound reverberating from his bony yet masculine depths. She was quickly beginning to adore that simple indifferent laugh of his, neutrality leaking from his tenors, only she knew that with most things, he was clearly black and white.

"Evidence is what closes a case, but intuition is what instigates it. I value it in a person very much."

She blinked at him solemnly, as if silently thanking him for his bizarre compliments. He suddenly reached out with spidery digits, pale and long and somehow so graceful to make up for their odd contours, and petted her head in a semi affectionate gesture. Linda exhaled gently, closing her eyes and reveling the contact that she had longed for yet been starved of for so long. She hadn't been touched in so long. So many children at Wammy's despised physical interaction, the only contact they made an exception to the roughhousing rituals of violent sports. But until the moment his palm touched her head, a sensation of warmth washed over her body like a soothing tepid stream caressing her skin, and a blush rose steadily over the plane of her delicately dappled cheeks.

"Are you sick? You're awfully colored." L said, pulling his hand away and leaving Linda feeling bereft.

"Uh uh...I just...haven't been touched in so long. Thank you for that." She said honestly. There was no use being modest or untruthful to him.

"How funny, most kids hate being touched. You're quite adaptable, and sweet."

"Thank you..."

"Please do not mistake these compliments for flattery. When I say things like that, I usually verily mean them. Shall we sit in the grass once more? I was under the impression you were going inside with the other children. I am quite keen on spending some more time in the sun to nourish this pallid skin of mine."

"Sure..." Linda said, kneeling back down on the grass next to him, sensing the presence of their companion in a newly buried dirt mount beside them. Solemn and quiet, they sat together, the blades of grass engulfing her knees and his pale bare feet which were stained lightly with soil. The birds seemed to chirp exclusively for her as her heart thumped pleasantly against her small ribcage, a warm breeze caressing her skin, and she watched contentedly as it flew between the threads of his mussed obsidian hair. She squinted curiously; everything around them seemed to sparkle.

"L?"

He glanced at her but once. Something in the woods unseen by her held the majority of his attention.

"Do you enjoy being touched?" She said, remembering his gentle hand upon her matted auburn crown just moments before.

"Mmm...I can't say I do."

"And yet you willingly touch others." Linda elaborated.

"You are correct."

She raised her eyebrows. "That doesn't seem very fair."

His stare became half lidded, his stubborn indifference challenging her. "No, I suppose it's not."

"Does it frighten you? Or do you enjoy it and would rather no one knew?"

L seemed to hold his breath for a second longer than normal, as though the question was sprung on him and he didn't quite know how to react. Linda watched him carefully, wondering if he was considering lying to her, wondering if he would be honest, wondering what was going on beyond what she could see of his mysterious form of cryptic actions and words. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head.

"Once again, I must say you're so very astute." He said lightly, tongue sliding thoughtfully over his bottom lip. "I guess you could say it's a little bit of both. I don't necessarily like being touched, but mostly I avoid it out of inexperience."

"By that logic, if you were touched more often, you would become accustomed to it?" Linda said, failing to see any depraved implications that her string of words may have possessed.

An expression settled upon his face that she found rather peculiar for his series of bland manifestations, as though he were both disgusted and afraid of the prospect of being touched more than he had to. "Yes Linda, you're probably correct. But I cant just simply concede to welcoming physical contact."

"Why not?"

"I suppose its because it scares me."

That made her very quiet for some time. She contemplated her options, any recalls that she might have had to his answer, a rebuttal, anything to fuel the conversation which had come to a screeching halt due to her thoughtful meditation. Taking one of her trademark leaps of faith, she reached out and held a piece of his sleep delicately between her index finger and thumb, as though she was attempting to be a relic of L himself and the way he held things so gingerly. His eyes were wide, watching her with an owlish sense of alarm, but he made no move away from her, simply stood there, crooked and awkwardly surprised as she used his sleeve to pull his hand from the depth of his pocket. Her hand brushed the top of his wrist and faintly over the aquiline bulges of his arthritic knuckles, and being gentle as possible, so has not to startle L into retreating back into his bubble of extended personal space, she nestled her tiny hand within his, feeling the hot pulse of his rushing blood beneath the surface of his palm.

L stared at her for some time, assessing the supposed threat, deciding that it was not deadly and finally accepting her touch. He looked down at their conjoined hands, looking perplexed and stumped, obviously uncomfortable harboring so much uncertainty. Linda met his dubiety with a soft smile, eyes shimmering with as much benevolence she could muster. She had grown to adore this man who had taken such a strange liking. By letting her draw him, her attachment was inevitable and nondetachable. By letting them bury the bird properly with a hymn and a widely dug hole, he was a code she was suddenly desperate to crack. Touching him, talking to him, being with him suddenly became the main priority. She wasn't at all interested in replacing this immaculate testimony to all that provided them with the lovely mysteries they were meant to unfold and divulge to the world, a secret greed planted within them all, even sweet Linda, to expose each enigma, even if it were only a personal disclosure. She was young, yes, but she had never been so inspired by anything or anyone in her entire menial existence.

He was...

A muse.

_I've found you. _

"It seems you have done what all the other children were afraid to do." He said breathlessly, clearing his throat and attempting to be subtle about his astonishment.

Linda said nothing to this. Savoring the feeling of his touch for just one last moment, she pulled away slowly, a blush slowly spreading across her cheeks once more as she gazed into his eyes, once empty now reflecting a gentle effulgence at being caressed in such a personal way. She searched for the word of what this was, and mentally stumbled upon 'platonic', and yet she felt the connection so strongly she was not sure it was sincere to use such a word that did not apply to something so drastic, so invigorating. It may have frightened him, but she relished it in her own quiet flushed way, dipping her head down and letting her wild hair veil the pleased expression hatched upon her satisfied visage.

"You are far too sentimental." He said, regaining his composure and slowly dipping the hand she had held back into its respected pocket. "But I appreciate it."

Linda beamed. Elusively of course, for she was a humble soul, but she beamed nonetheless. Her smile was small and silent, neck poised in a curve and giving her expression a bout of privacy.

_I can't believe I found you. _

The rise and fall of the sun was one crucial thing Linda failed to pay attention to. Soon her time with him would run out, but she lived those few days as though they were her last on earth; joyful, talkative, and inspired by this man who had come into her life. He was a blessing from who knew where, listening to her thoughts and being tolerant towards her opinions. Never before had she experienced such a bliss. She lived so deeply in the moment that she forgot these were the wonder years, the precious times she would have with L before he left for years and years, his return nothing but an iridescent wraith playing tricks on people's hopes. _Her_ hopes. She kept her distance when it seemed like he would rather be alone than have company, but in truth she found herself following him, watching him from afar, immediately recognizing his scent in random places in the mansion and following it to his present location. He fascinated her. The fixation that had wormed its way into her belly and brain would not let up on the captivation she had for the genius. Deep within there had to be so much treasure to behold, beauty and ugliness unfolding from L's precious body the moment he decided to finally unlock himself and let forth the broken dam of his glory. Over the course of the next few days, she remained devoid of food and yet she didn't feel the clenching pain of hunger stir within her belly. She felt not the famished cramp, just the consuming intensity that came from her current adoration she had for the young man.

His reasoning, his doubts, his _quirks, _they all fascinated her to the point where she wished that she could spend every waking day analyzing the subtle movements and gestures that were so uniquely engrained in his persona. His own demeanor towards her remained something others would say was neutral, but she never interpreted his aloofness in such a way, in fact it hardly felt like he were aloof around her at all. His voice, so delicate yet powerful, was growing hoarse from how much he conversed with her. They talked of the stars, how they aligned and what they meant for them as human beings from both an astronomic and astrological view. They talked of the wars brewing in certain parts of the world that laid untouched by democracy and barren of peace. They talked of mathematics, their favorite pieces of artwork _(he had said he enjoyed the Mona Lisa the most, because it was like gazing at the female version of himself). _

They had talked so much that his other successors were astounded by how L looked upon her with such respect, the pathetic fourth successor in line for the inheritance of his title. Near was rather complacent on the matter, withdrawing into himself far more than usual and retreating to either the playroom or his dormitory for the remainder of L's stay. Matt had attempted to gain his attention through various areas of interest, such as his video games and a program he had single handedly invented on his computer. Praised, yet not sought after, he also decided to recede. Mello would do no such thing. His intimidation tactics were bouts of intensity that Linda could just barely handle. His glares meant death, and his words meant a fate worse than death.

She was washing her hands in one of the shared girl's lavatory, calmed by the hot water flowing steadily over her soapy hands, when the door swung open and she shrieked in surprise for she expected one of the haughtier girls to have made an entrance. To her horror, it was Mello, his face shining with flushed fire, exuding doom and destruction by mere expression alone. Linda began to tremble, her hands shaking so badly that she ended up accidentally sweeping her sketchbook and pencils onto the damp washroom floor. And yet, amidst her fear, she spoke her the contents of her mind.

"W-what are you doing in the girls' bathroom, Mello?"

He didn't answer her. Instead he strode over, grabbing her violently by the shoulders and slamming her hard into one of the closed bathroom stalls. She cried out again, only to be silenced by a rough calloused hand gluing itself to her mouth, her scream diminished to nothing but a faint muffle. She stared at him, frightened. His eyes were of aquamarine ice, and yet they held so much heat within them. Even having been transported to a place of fear and veneration, she found it ironic that the devil in black also wore a cross around his neck.

"I'm sorry!" She pleaded from beneath his hand over her lips. "Whatever I did, I'm sorry!"

"Shut up." He said quietly, the ruthlessness evident in his voice. And then he narrowed his eyes, upper lip lifting itself in disgust. "Look at you, so afraid. I don't know what he sees in you."

_He must be talking about L. _

"I'm sorry Mello..." She said again, tears brimming in the corners of her eyes. "I'm so sorry...please just let me go."

"I said, SHUT UP." He then pounded a spot on the stall near her head, making her flinch. "Look at you, you're so weak and pathetic. I don't get why he would pay so much attention to you."

Linda closed her eyes. The fear had penetrated her, paralyzed her. Perhaps Mello was right, she _was _weak and pathetic, and now she was going to let him beat her to a bloody pulp.

The door swung open again, this time revealing a savior of all saviors.

"Mello, what are you doing?" L asked slowly, his tenor sinking down into the depths of his baritone chords.

Mello immediately let go of Linda, and she quickly wiped her tears and ran out of the bathroom into the hallway, looking back to see the boy in lacquered black with his head hanging low, and yet the contours on his face were not creased in either remorse or regret.

~o~

_As the stars mocked my sorrows with their brightness, I wondered if being kind really was a weakness. I wondered where I was before the orphanage swallowed me up into its intangible force competition and insanity. I wondered why Mello was so angry. I wondered why Near didn't care about anything. I wondered why Matt seemed so detached. I wondered about L. I wondered why his kindness felt so sincere, and yet something about his benignity felt so contrived. I wondered why I was finally fascinated by him after so long of rejecting everything that had to do with him. I don't understand the feelings brewing inside of me like hot liquor, whose smell I remember so well and yet from whose breath of stifling air I have forgotten. Suddenly it clicks, and my heart leaps. L is the path to remembering my past. L is the path to knowing my future. L is the path to enjoying the present. Even being so young, I knew I wanted him in my life forever, being the mentor he always was, saying his strange things and looking amused at the flabbergasted expression upon my face. I wanted him so badly. I..._

_I..._

_I can't say._


	4. Chapter 4

She couldn't sleep.

Her body felt like it was separated from her mind, writhing in sweat and hackneyed sleep, and she couldn't figure out why her eyes kept swelling with unwanted tears. She finally gave up, and conceded to laying still on the gentle lilliputian curve of her back, hands folded across the plane of her chest. In the beginning she counted the small moving dots she saw on the ceiling amidst the darkness, at times unsure whether what she saw within the sphere of obscurity was real or otherwise, but her thoughts laid elsewhere.

Tomorrow was L's last day.

For a reason that was very elusive or simply far too senescent for her admittedly puerile maturity, she could barely formulate the notion without her eyes accommodating another blurry batch of salt water leaking slowly from the ducts. They slid down the side of her youthful cheekbones and spotted the pillow beneath her head with their wetness. She was beyond questioning her rationality, for after going over the situation in her head hundreds of thousands of times she grew weary of logicality. Linda suddenly understood why everybody was so obsessed with L, even a little why they wanted to _become _him as well. In spite of his presence, his tangibility, his hand that was so clammy and under what most would call a normal temperature, he still seemed so unobtainable, like a puff of smoke falling constantly between the cracks of her fingers. She wanted more from him, more attention, more praise, more of his attention. The craving was great, and the anxiety it caused her was something astounding. So many discoveries about herself and the world around her were being made, and after living in a monotonous haze of her art, so precious and treasured, but put in second place to the man who had stolen her small beating heart right out of her chest. It was almost too much for her mind to handle, and it took its toll upon her delicate little body.

She turned to her side, clenching her stomach as disquieting pain sank through her petite abdomen like fire scorching her interiors. The nerves, the anxiety, it was as amazing as it was painful, and she could not help but feel humbled by her own intense feelings, feelings that she believed only belonged to people like Mello. He given her quite a scare in the bathroom, but once again she forgave him, which was an eerily easy task. In her mind there was no use dwelling on such things. Mello was an angry boy, dissatisfied with constantly being one step behind Near in the running. She wondered if he was always hateful and violent, even before he came to the orphanage. Her thoughts then shifted to wondering the same thing about L. Had he been born so indifferent, treating death with a nonchalant wave of his hand? She played his mannerisms and the shreds of his personality he had allowed her to see first hand behind her eyelids. Perhaps he had all of the same idiosyncrasies since he was born, but only until he came to Wammy's House was that carved into a near lethal weapon of sorts, used to combat the world of crime and enforce a healthy dose of arrogance beneath his belt. She contemplated his aspects heavily, wanting to see more of his mysterious personality, wanting him to reveal a past that he couldn't have possibly forgotten unlike her absentmindedness that had made her life before the orphanage nothing but a haze of watercolor fog painted in dull dismal colors.

And so she lay there for, thinking, sweating, hurting, and she silently vowed that all was for the sake of L. It was all for the sake of his soul, the bleeding beating muscle beneath his spindly ribcage that thumped just like every other member of humanity. Anyone would argue that he was not human, however. That his habits and way of life were nothing but a wall to keep everyone from invading the private spaces within his precious ingenuity, a mind crafted by the best of professors and studied by the most curious of scientists. She wanted to be the one who crack the code, to weave her way inside his frighteningly adroit mind of immaculate cleverness and devious cunning. She wanted everything of his, to share his moments of happiness and to be there to witness and offer solace to the rare times he fell apart. Linda knew nothing about the details of these sentiments, but as agonizing as they were, she enjoyed the reality of it all. Painting so many interpretations of the world had imprisoned her behind a wall of acrylic pillars, jailing her from facing the planet and its inhabitants for what they were.

He was her way out. Her way in. Her way everywhere she had ever dreamed of treading.

Yet, she knew not where it would lead her; down the road of sadness or down the moss covered path that would lead her to a breed of salvation she had never known. Seldom did she have to experience these kinds of predicaments, the kinds of circumstances that could lead one to happiness or a dismal hole where light refused to shine. Loving L could hurt her, or bring her great happiness. Even in all her naïve glory, she knew that he was a dangerous force to be reckoned with. He had the entire orphanage beneath his thumb, playing the main part in this dispiriting play of insanity and competitive madness that had settled upon all the children except for her.

At least...she used to be free of his spell.

She didn't want to go insane. She didn't want to become the greatest detective in the world. She didn't want to give up her art and everything that made her the person she was simply so she could replce someone once they had failed their purpose. In the subtle reaches of her memory, she remembered a voice, faint and soft, and so unbelievably sad, speak to her from a place inside her mind that she did not recognize.

_Falling in love will make you go crazy. _

That voice, she _knew _that voice, and yet its message was far more entrancing. Would her adoration for L lead her down the road of lunacy?

Suddenly it clicked inside of her. She no longer cared. L was something so brilliant that she couldn't let her moments with him pass her by in favor of the less beaten path. Her body began to tremble again with such a personal revelation. It had only been a week that she had spent with him, and already she knew where she stood. She didn't want his placement as the world's greatest detective, there was just this aching desire to understand him, to be with him, to help him connect to a humanity he had long since hidden from, retreating to the darkness of anonymity. Her desire was to help him realize to the deepest extent how human he truly was. It all lead to such scathing questions she knew she would never dare to ask him. Have you ever cried? Do you remember your parents? Do you _miss _your parents? Are you happy with what you're doing?

It was like counting sheep. Linda fell asleep, the questions she stored within her psyche taking root and providing dreams of cotton apples and the pale fingers and lips that consumed their sweetness.

~o~

_I'll find him tomorrow, make him breath the air with me deeply and show him the bluest parts of the skies, telling him that liquified angel feathers were what gave the heavens their color. Soon he'll understand that seraphs parade through the day, and ravens and crows bring the night with their feathers of obscurity, stygian abyss mantled upon the earth like a weary goddess's shroud. I want him to see the world and its beauty. I will teach him to see such beauty, to embrace it and never let it go for anything. I will teach him to see me, as a person who cares about him, not a thief sniffing out his position for myself. I will teach him to see, see, **see. **_

~o~

Morning brought the liquid dew of sunshine through her shrouded window, and as her eyes opened ever so slightly the immediate effect of exhaustion told her that she didn't get nearly as much sleep as she had hoped. But she ignored her body's pleas for rest and rose wearily, quickly rubbing the crusts of sleep from her eyes. She remained breathless, knowing what day it was, knowing what would take place, and her heart ached for it. In the depths of her soul she knew that once L left, things would go back to the way they were normally, and unsure if she was ready for such certainty to take its place back into her life, she feared it, dreaded it even. L was more than just a mere person to her, more than just the stories that she heard growing up. Despite her young age, she finally realized what the feeling at the pit of her stomach was, and as much as she abhorred it for making her feel the way it did, she also felt blessed having known such a sentiment so early in life. Taking a deep breath, tensing her abdominal muscles in the relentless hope that the anxiety would leave her body and give her a moment's peace, she emerged from her bed, treading on the trash littering her entire room before finding the paved pathway through the debris. It was a stunningly beautiful day, as though nature mocked her sorrows and took derisive jabs at her current quandary. She wandered some, taking in everything about the scenery so she could one day paint it in all of its exceptional beauty as well as looking for L, perhaps one of three of his best successors so they may tell her where the young man resided.

For a brief moment, Linda seemed soulless, the sadness and grief planted like an evil seed in her heart by a demon administering her mounted ride to the depths of hell. The feeling weighed her down as though bricks were attacked all four of her limbs, and while it hurt to know that tomorrow, life would continue as it were, such a sentiment of vast loneliness and heartache was so achingly familiar. The glow of her happiness was fading into something dismal and bovine, her unique childish beauty no longer shining in the form of a pulsating lovely aura. Though she tried to remain resolved about enjoying her last day with L, it was difficult to accept that in a few mere hours, it was possible that she would never see him again. He was a worldwide commodity, the one whom everyone sought, and despite the fact that she was now one of those people, it felt different to her. Her adoration felt different from everyone else's. The admiration she felt for the young man, so much more grown up than her own jejune stature and yet even more adolescent in manner. She wondered if it was wrong to love someone like that, to love a man who was worth immensely more than her existence, who was older in both mind and body. The more she thought of it, the more it stank of taboo, but in the end she came back to the same conclusion of never caring what others thought of her. The girl had always been a little different from an average successor; L said it himself. She had compassion. She had love. She had kindness. All that connected her to a real human being was under her belt, and now she felt the throbbing essence beating like a second heartbeat within her core, whispering to her, telling her things she didn't want to hear but desperately needed to.

_You love him. _

_You love him so much. You don't yet realize the extent to which it will go. _

_You don't realize how wrong it is. _

But it felt so right. How could anything that made her feel as though she soared be wrong, she asked the voice, privately, humbly, inwardly mimicking the heartfelt yet dangerous coo that her intuition was verbalizing.

_It's simple. He'll never love you back. _

Linda gripped at the spot above her heart, fingers clawing at the seams of her shirt so hard that they violently grazed her delicate skin. It was taunting possibility, one that could ruin the foundations she had worked so hard to build around her fragile psyche, something she realized that L had wounded with his intelligence, his boldness, his candor that no other human could deliver as beautifully and truthfully. She felt violated by her own thoughts, the same thoughts she always trusted now turning against her, stabbing her in the back just as the notion of a deeper affection had finally asserted itself inside of her. She walked, ignoring the frantic lurches in her stomach signaling something hurtful and detrimental to her mental health.

But she kept walking, this time faking her bravery which became a thing of nonsense as she sought the man who had spoon fed her muse. She found them all in the library, L surrounded by Matt and Mello who stared at him intently as he read aloud from a book whose title she could not yet see. Near sat nearby on the floor, away from them who sat in chairs, L of course donning his bizarre position which would always remain engrained in her brain as the post that characterized him in her drawing of him. Once again, she felt around for her sketchbook and a pencil of any kind, but there was none. She hated herself for being so forgetful, but she didn't turn around to fetch it, thus missing yet another perfect scene. He was like the sun, his three best successors the silent planets spinning out in space, surrounding him, revolving around him perfectly like a cyclical chronicle that would never end. They would never betray him, never shift from their admiration, even Near, who once again was pretending that his toys held all of his attention, but there were small signs that revealed that he was just as engrossed in L's lecture as the other two. Linda longed to join them, but found she could not move. It was too much of a private thing, too concealed. Whilst everyone else played outside (and by playing they were absorbed in their studies beneath the sunlight occasionally fading behind wandering clouds), they preferred the sanctity of indoors, taunting her, mocking her. Knowing such truths, she felt something very familiar, yet foreign in the ways of anger and jealousy seeping up to the surface, sullying her docile appearance with a subtle breed of wrathful ire.

_I cant interrupt them, but I deserve to be there, with them. _

_With him. _

She clung to the wall, wrapping her nimble fingers around the corner which connected the library to the hallway, watching forlornly at the four of them before she was finally acknowledged, plainly, subtly, softly, by the voice of L and his smooth tenors dripping with a strange politeness that only the mind of a child and the diction of an adult could have executed.

"Ah, sweet Linda, would you like to join us for a bit of Dostoyevsky?"

She almost shook her head, but instead she remained motionless, staring at the four of them with a strange hopeless sad expression whose origins she could not decipher.

"Is everything okay?" L asked, his emotionless mask slipping, or that could have always been her imagination playing surrealistic tricks on her mind.

And in an instant, a strained smile took over her lips and she nodded profusely, a lie upon her visage evident yet unmentioned beneath his perceptive stare. "I'm fine thank you, I just didn't want to interrupt your lesson."

"You're free to do as you wish." L said, turning his gaze back to the book as though to search for his missing place.

So she did. Linda took a seat next to Matt who merely glanced at her, as opposed to Mello who administered his lethal death glare upon her like a mad surgeon with a syringe in hand. L went on, discussing the contents of the book in greater and greater detail, but Linda found she was not paying attention as she normally would. Rather than listening to his lecture, she stared at the way his lips moved; firm yet flexible, stiffened and barely moving more than they had to as they worked together with his tongue which was beet red from the many suckers he must have already had that morning. The space between his lips and nose was a smooth cylindrical dip, leading up to his septum in a graceful long highway. High cheekbones sang gently of Asiatic heritage, and yet the shape of his nose and the elongated form of his skull was evidence of European blood pulsing through his veins. She knew so little about him, though when they were together he talked copiously, the extravagance of his ingenious words never lost on either of them. Accompanying his voice was the soft pattering of Near whose task had switched from stacking dice to putting together a hundred piece puzzle, completely disregarding that toys were only supposed to stay in the children's area, and yet L said nothing about the matter. When he was finished, he snapped the book shut, also snapping his successors out of whatever daze they were in whether or not their attention was truly focused on what he was saying.

He finished, his last rationalizing phrase of words sticking to all their adroit minds except for hers, for she was far too distracted sketching him in her head, each pencil stroke an implement to embody his beauty. Her heart thumped at an alarming pace as he dismissed Matt, Mello, and Near, urging the three of them to take note of his last lecture before he left, to think and contemplate on what the story meant and represented in their lives. Matt left with Mello, the two of them looking back curiously at their mentor still gazing at the spine of the book he held delicately between his fingers. Near finished his puzzle, dumped the pieces back into the box, and left soon after, leaving them sitting on opposite sides of the table. L didn't say anything for quite some time. Linda cherished the silence, for it was a piece of time for them to share, and she saw no use not to treasure it for what it was.

"Shame you didn't draw from my presentation as the others did. Was my diction too boring?" He asked suddenly, still not looking directly at her.

Linda blushed furiously. "N-no, of course not. I was just..."

"Inattentive?" He interrupted.

"...Distracted." She said, softly correcting him. "I meant no disrespect."

"Yes, I know, Linda." L agreed somberly, shaking his head from side to side just slightly, as though he was having trouble believing in something that was unlikely to happen. "It never fails to surprise me how different you are from the rest."

"Is different a good thing in your eyes, L?"

"Yes, certainly. At the same time, you blend with the rest of humanity better than the rest of us. That heart of yours is very strong, and very valuable."

Linda was quiet for some time, head tilted down to hide the blush spreading from her cheeks to her forehead, and then down her chin and the graceful curve of her slender neck. Before long, she rose, walking around the table to sit in the seat directly next to L, looking into his face with some hesitance. He blinked at her softly, as though subtly threatened by her sudden closeness, the proximity between them harmless, yet poignant and heavy.

_Does he feel what I feel?_

"You want to draw me again." He stated rather than asked.

Linda's brow pulled downward, her expression questioning his cryptic affirmation. "I have a book filled with sketches of you. I'm sure you wouldn't want to spend your last day at the orphanage wasting your time with me."

"On the contrary," He said, rubbing his bottom lip with the tip of his long dextrous thumb. "I rather enjoy the time we spend together. It is a breath of fresh air to get away from those whose obsession with me has overcome their rationality."

At that, Linda gulped. _Perhaps I'm not so different after all. _

"So you would like another portrait?" She asked hesitantly.

"Yes, very much so. And I want this one to be even better than your last. After observing me so much over the course of a week, I trust you'll make it count, considering this is my last day here."

"Oh..." She breathed softly. It was a whole new feeling hearing him divulge his adjournment so casually. "Then...I promise this will be the greatest work I have ever produced."

L stared at her for a few seconds' time before smiling at her, always a strange stroke of happenstance, yet warm and enjoyable all the same. He reached over with one of his awkwardly scrawny arms, and patted her gently on the head. "Aspiring L robots or not, I do enjoy it when my successors are ambitious."

He stood, letting his legs drop down from their drawn position to touch the carpeted floor with bare crooked toes. "Very well then, I shall see you tonight."

"Yes...of course." She replied, rubbing her neck and frowning as she felt the blood that had rushed to her face had also traveled to her nape.

She watched him intently as he left.

_Look back. Look back at me. Tell me that I truly mean something to you. _

She received a passive glance. And that was all she needed.

-x-

Paintings and drawings now sorted into their rightful places, Linda took a step back to admire her work, the seemingly impossible task of cleaning her room tucked proudly beneath her belt. Now she wouldn't have to practically shovel a path to get from her doorway to the bed, and with L's awkward posture, despite that he had exhibited no corporeal discomfort from such a crookedly engrained pose, perhaps it would be easier for him as well. He had said he didn't mind it, that his own was worse than hers, but ever still, Linda felt that tonight should be special, the greatest farewell she had ever made for someone, and prayed it would be for him as well. It had taken several hours; the husk shaped clouds surrounding a setting sun was quite the display of rich tangerine and yellow ripping through the sky like a vengeful god's wild fingers scraping at a canvas. Sighing heavily having finished such a chore, she sat down on the corner of her bed, the opposite of the one that L had sat poised for his first portrait. He had never said specifically when he would show up for his final modeling, but she decided to wait, assuming nothing and yet everything all at once. What if he didn't show up, she wondered, her throat tightening at the thought and those that followed. What if he's spending time with someone else? What if he left early? What if he left without saying goodbye? What if this was the last time she would ever truly see him?

Her tongue swept out and wet her drying lips, chap forming upon the surface of her mouth since she could not control any of the idiosyncrasies she had been bestowed through a harsh anxiety. The butterflies in her stomach had soon turned into snakes, and they writhed with a ravishing hunger as though they were trying to attain their freedom by tearing a hole in her stomach. Finally, she took a deep breath, holding it, listening to the blood rushing in her ears, before letting it out, finding a temporary relief until she heard a quiet, yet deafening and forthright knock on her door.

"Come in..." Linda said, clearing her throat afterward.

So he did. He opened he door with confidence, never one to peek around the corner to see if he was still needed. He was _always _needed, and no one ever refused to reject his company, which was given like rare gifts with the finest of strings made of secrets tying up the loose ends. She gazed at him for a moment, her eyes softly shimmering as they flew over his presence greedily, taking in the details of his stature for the hundredth time. L stepped lightly over the threshold of the door, taking a brief moment to analyze his surroundings and the differences between now and the first time he had set foot in her room.

"I see you cleaned. Was that because you wanted to impress me?" He asked candidly, afraid of nothing, least of all weeding out the true motives of people's actions.

"A little bit." Linda said, smiling a little. "But mostly I wanted you to be able to walk through my room without stepping or tripping on anything."

"I see, that is very considerate of you." He said, that bland plastic sheet once again covering his voice, something she found very off-putting due to the comfort and sense of normalcy she felt when he inserted just the slightest bit of emotion and humanity in his tenors. Linda blinked once at noticing such a thing, but she said nothing about it, and wasn't going to.

"Please, sit wherever or however you please." She offered meekly, gesturing to the bed.

As he sat in his usual fashion, he watched in interest as she took out an easel from behind her dresser, then produced several brushes both thick and thin. She glanced at L, who was watching her very intently, knowing that all sorts of inquiries must have been sorting themselves within his brilliant mind. She knew she was going to do something different, something amazing to cure her aching heart and soothe her mind. This was going to be her best work so far, she decided.

"No graphite?" L asked, invisible eyebrows raised in curiosity as he watched her pull out a set of watercolors from the drawer of her dresser.

"No..." Linda shook her head. "I decided to do something different tonight. I thought of using acrylics, but they're too colorful. Then I thought of doing it in oil paints, but those are too thick and messy, yet at the same time far too clean and shaven. So then..."

She used the moment to create a pregnant pause, going to her bathroom to fill two cups of water to start, coming back and sitting on a stool she had placed in front of her easel. L still watched her intently, his dark eyes following her every movement and deciphering them like a computer. It felt strange, yet invigorating how used to it she was becoming, how accustomed she soon was to be under that kind of scrutiny. She no longer took it personally, as an affronted attack upon her deepest secrets. In fact, she found it strangely flattering that he wanted to worm his way through her insides, to know her inside and out. The thought made her shiver. L noticed, but said nothing to acknowledge it, for some details distracted one from the main idea.

"I decided to do it in watercolor." Linda finished, watching for his reaction.

His brow creased. "Why?"

"Because watercolors bring out the humanity in someone. They're impressionistic and have little to no boundaries." She then shrugged. "Not to mention, they're beautiful."

_Much like you. _

"I see." L said. "Well then, please begin."

Before her pencil could touch the canvas to first sketch his outline, she put it to her mouth, peering at him from behind the easel in consideration.

"What is it?" He asked.

"Do you think you could sit normally? Perhaps with your legs crossed?" She knew it was a lot to ask, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

For the first time that evening, he seemed subtly perturbed. "Legs...crossed? That is something I have not done in some time."

Surprisingly enough, and seemingly with a little more trouble that it would have taken any normal person, L awkwardly positioned himself at the edge of the bed, elongating his body so that his legs hung over the sides of her mattress, leaning back on his palms. Linda could not help but stare at the way he folded one leg over the other, as though the pose were something alien and unpleasantly foreign. She could see the ungainliness in his bones as he tried to conform to her request. Finally, despite the curve in his upper vertebrae, he looked normal, and Linda smiled, for at that moment his normality was beautiful.

"Is this to your liking, Linda?" He said, his voice slightly strained. He was obviously unused to such a position.

"Yes, it's perfect." She said, her smile hidden by the watercolor paper but evident in the tone of her voice.

Her sketch was done quickly. Her hand soared over the paper, only taking its time to carefully draw the details of his face. The closer she observed him, she noticed a sharpness about him that she hadn't seen the first time she met him. His eyes were so much more carved, and she could swear the slightest bit of deep ocean blue radiated from their depths, whereas they were once completely dilated and enshrouded in an aphotic darkness that was as scary as it was endearing. His hair, once a collected of black raven feathers sticking haphazardly from the base of his head, was now slightly tamed, the color deeper and less dead, as though he had conditioned it deeply for the first time in years. The spaces of darkness beneath his eyes had diminished, only lines below his thick camel eyelashes instead of great sagging bags of unrest and stressed skin tissue.

The first thing she did was paint the highlights. Wonderfully enough, the room was dim and the light marginal, so her base color was almost as dark as the shadows she would soon apply. Her brush was quick yet graceful, dipping into the dewy pools of watercolor until the page was already swimming with hues of both light and dark. There was a touch of irony in her actions. Here she was painting him with such detail, and yet it would never be anything more than an impression of hers, an portrayal of his persona through paint and water. Soon her strokes diminished into small fleeting touches of the hairs on her brush against the paper as she began to do the details. She glanced up at him, admiring him once more, taking as many notes as possible about his body and face, making sure she didn't forget everything.

In return, he seemed to gaze back at her, nonplussed, and yet invasive, as though he were trying to decipher the gears behind her own head and how the cylinder of her mind fired.

"Is something wrong, L?" She asked quietly, peeking timidly around her easel to gaze at his encroaching expression.

"Not at all. I was just marveling at how quickly your hands are when inspired."

"Thank you...but I have a feeling that's not the reason you were truly looking at me so intensely. Is something on your mind?"

"Yes." L said blankly, as though to secretly whisper that there was always something on his mind, always something that needed to be rationalized and analyzed mercilessly until there was nothing left.

"Would you tell me what it is? You don't have to if you don't want to though..." Her brush ceased for but a moment, frozen in midair.

"You fascinated me, Linda."

She was quiet for some time before asking, "More than Near?"

"Somewhat."

"More than Mello?"

"I suppose."

"More than Matt?"

"Poor child," L sighed in a strange ungainly form of sympathy. "He doensn't realize his potential."

"Well why me?" She asked, her eyes wide and voice quiet as though she were tip toeing through a house of sleeping mice.

He didn't answer right away, just let the question sift and simmer in his mind like his ears were a pair of lips and her inquiry a fine wine being sampled. "I've said many times before how different you are. I sense a change in myself when we spend time together. You lack everything that the other children possess."

His last statement almost hurt, but she listened on to find out what he meant by it.

"And yet you're blessed with what they will never know they are missing. Even I have been a cold fish when it comes to the art of compassion."

He paused, his gaze turning downward and settling on an insignificant spot on her bed. "Sometimes, I do not believe that I'm human."

Her brush almost slipped in surprise, nearly ruining the piece in its entirety. And yet, Linda paid no attention to it, just stared at him with a look concocted of both awe and raw unpleasant shock.

"How can you say something like that?" She said, quite passionately at that, so much it seemed to startle the detective, whose eyes grew a fraction as she stood from her easel stool and marched to the edge of the bed where he sat. L instinctively drew his legs up to his chest as his body leaned back from her gentle onslaught.

"How can you say you're not human?" She asked again.

"I do not sleep, my eating habits either create obesity or death in others, I barely go out into the sunlight, I do not enjoy being around large sums of people..."

"Those things don't mean you're not human." Linda said with a gentle disdain.

"What I've said has made you angry. Why?" L asked, narrowing his eyes as he already was trying to figure out what her reasoning was.

"Because being human is a beautiful thing, and not even you can escape that."

Linda's gaze faltered, and soon she was looking at the floor, as though guilty about what she had said and how adamantly she had said it. Would he prove her wrong? Would he lecture her about her wrongdoings? Would he call her an ignorant child like she deserved and leave her alone that evening all together?

She felt hands reaching out, grabbing hers.

"So...sweet Linda thinks I'm human." He said, tilting his head as he gazed at her curiously,

She nodded, still not looking at him, but the connection between them of fingers and flesh and bone.

"I...I _know _you're human, L."

"Successors are supposed to have strong core beliefs." He said nonchalantly, letting go of her hands, satisfied enough with the contact he had made. "I think you've painted enough tonight...may I see the piece you've done so far?"

He stood, walking over to the easel and gazing at the work pinned to it, allegedly unfinished. Inspecting it, dissecting it, his seemingly lidless and merciless stare seemed to burn a hole right through the watercolor paper.

"I have very long legs." He said offhandedly, bringing a hand up to his chin so he could thumb the slight plumpness of his pale bottom lip. It were as though he had never truly seen himself before that night. "And I am also very skinny."

Linda shrugged. "That's just how I see you. I could be wrong."

"Have more faith in yourself; this is a very exquisite piece."

"But...its not even finished yet."

"I dont think it needs any more additions." L replied, casual as always, sitting back down on her bed in his usual style that time. Linda stood from her stool, her skinny prepubescent legs looking almost as awkward as him. She came and sat down next to him, head bowed and hands folded neatly in her lap. Taking a deep breath, she yawned, vainly trying to stifle it lest she give off the notion that she was bored, but her mouth opened wide, and L stared at her lips as they did so. Embarrassed, she looked down again, not raising her gaze to meet his own.

"It is quite early still, and yet you seem exhausted." L said.

Linda nodded. "It's been busy for me. For both of us."

"No matter for me, I hardly sleep as I've said before. But you..." He 'hmmed' for a moment, running his thumb all over the plane of his pale chapped lips. "You could do with some rest. Please, climb into bed."

Linda raised an eyebrow, mouth parted in consideration before quietly slipping under her covers now devoid of garbage and trashed works. His request was strange, but she listened to him anyway. L would never hurt her, never deceive her, never act too much like an adult nor too much like a child, and that was something she was sure of. His secrets were his own to guard, and she would never resort to clandestine ways to decrypt those secrets. L scooted closer to her as she laid her head down on her pillows, still gazing at him and wondering where his actions would lead him. He sat with his legs crunched up against his chest, one of his long lanky arms reaching out and touching her softly on the crown of her head.

"Please forgive me if I'm a bit rusty. I have not done this in some time. The other children don't really like it. Makes them mourn for their parents, and I'd rather not cause them that kind of stress."

His fingers felt good, like they were dancing across the delicate fibers of her scalp and Linda felt herself closing her eyes, the comfort of his clammy fingers snaking their way deftly through the strands of her hair made her that much closer to the world where dreams would overtake her. Her eyes drooped, but out of the cracks of her eyelids she could see him in blurry vision stretch out on the other side of the bed as though he had never slept on one in his life, laying his head down on the other pillow she had on the bed. She watched him for some time, her brow knitting together as she asked him one more question as to why he had not left yet, why he had chosen to lay down though he did not seem to need much sleep.

"What are you doing?"

"Your bed is quite comfortable..." He said, and she smiled, almost laughing. "I have not slept in about a week and a half, and I will need to be rested for my journey tomorrow.

"Oh...that's right." Linda said softly, disappointment not once shielded from her voice.

"May I stay?" He asked somberly, sleep taking him over as well, and fast.

She watched obsessively as his eyes drooped, mouth slackened, and he drifted away into the land of a pleasant slumber. Taking one last look, and reaching out towards his face, she lifted away some locks of his hair that had fallen into his face upon his falling asleep on her bed and tucked them behind his ear so that she could see his unique and handsome visage, thanking whatever God there may be that she was blessed to have more time with him than anyone else at the orphanage.

Linda fell asleep, but never did her gaze stray from the detective who had willingly decided to stay in her room, even sleep in her bed.

She never felt the rays of sun glittering through the cracks of her drapes. She never felt the loving brush of skin that swept gently across her forehead. She never felt the kiss on her cheek, the kind one would give a family member when they weren't looking, or perhaps of another kind and far more taboo. She never heard the rustle of paper, or the scratching sound of a writing utensil flying across the page. She never heard the door shut, as though a ghost had slipped between the cracks. In her divine night of sleep, she was older, wiser, and smarter, the perfect mate for the perfect of people. It was a silly fantasy, but her sub conscious entertained it nonetheless.

She slept somberly, deeply, happily. When the morning came, the sky was orange and stained with a crimson bloom that reminded her of the way she painted carnage when her artwork was feeling unusually and astoundingly morbid. Awaking, she looked to her left, and to her right. L was gone.

_Gone._

She could hardly move. She never got to say goodbye, she never was able to touch him one last time...

And then she spotted the letter. It was neatly folded, with messy handwriting inside.

_I left hours before any of the children would wake, so don't feel alarmed. I will not return for several years, but I must say Linda, your company was a treasure and I will forever have such times engrained in my memory. The last bit of advice I can give you, Linda, is to never miss me too much. I will be back in a few years, and I cannot wait to see how you all have grown in your own individual ways, especially you. Don't ever stop painting, it will take you far. And though you have no use hearing this from someone like me, but always keep your head above the waves so you can breathe. An injury upon your person would be greatly dissatisfying to me. _

_Until then, please live prosperously. _

_~ L. _

Her heart stopped for but a moment, though it felt like an eternity.

L was gone, and would not be back for years in the future.

The sound of children already sounded throughout the orphanage as the day was truly about to begin.

Linda laid in bed, silently crying, thinking about how she once again became an invisible wraith, the one no one noticed until the scratching of her graphite pencil became too loud. She tried to describe this word to herself, and her lips moved silently, answering her own mind's question.

_Loneliness. _

_Pure, uncut, loneliness. _


	5. Chapter 5

a/n: _The excerpts from L's online visit are pulled straight from Death Note Relight 2: L's successors. His speech about monsters is actually what inspired this entire story. I own nothing. _

~0~

"_You don't actually think he truly cares about you, do you?" Mello said, artfully haughty and ardent as always. _

_I nodded. I never liked lying, and I would not fall victim to such an awful habit contaminating that which L had dubbed meaningful. And so I didn't lie, not even to Mello, who took the truth about as well as one takes their parents' deaths. He turned and left, mumbling something about despising idiocy. I merely blinked at his distaste, before turning my head away and letting my unfocused gaze to settle upon the empty impartiality of the outdoors. _

_It had been months since I last saw L, and each day that passed, I felt my brushes and pencils slipping further and further away from what was once my passion. I had completely missed my birthday, and forgot to light a candle in my wake. The days passed as a grim reminder that I had failed what he had asked me to do, which was to keep painting. I wistfully glanced at my sketchbook, knowing the last page's contents were the last painting I did of him, and something inside of me ached at the thought of drawing anything after his exquisite portraiture. It would be like replacing him, moving on with my life and approaching a future that would be stripped bare of the sentimentality I now hungrily thirsted for. _

_Each cloud reminded me of him. Each collection of stones. I constantly saw his reflection when I passed by any body of water, whether it be a puddle of rain or the bathroom sink as I desperately tried to scrub the filth of grief off my body each evening. His spirit haunted me, and I desperately tried to figure out why. My adoration for him had obviously crossed a threshold into an entirely different breed of idolization, and I dared not utter the notion even within the confines of my mind. It was too sickening, too verboten. I had once heard that having such feelings for someone older than you wasn't necessarily a big deal, but if those feelings were returned, it was something gruesome, an insult to the very profession L had sworn himself to. _

_It was impossible. Disgusting. _

_And yet the thoughts I entertained were of the fantastical, and taboo sort. _

_I yearned to be a woman, not this youngster of a thing, a puerile tadpole whose beliefs and opinions and feelings were worth less than parasites. Maybe if I was a woman, grown and mature, he would be free to express himself to me, the truest form of emotions without the never ending steady stream of masks he always covered himself with. I wanted him open, the both of us free from the shells in which we had imprisoned ourselves in. We were not so different, him and I, and each day as I thought about it, I had concluded that we were more alike than anyone else. The age difference was what kept us at bay, or at least me. _

_Who knew, he probably felt nothing but a vacant sense of daughterhood toward me._

_But I could dream. Oh how I could dream. It all began with a desire. Nothing in the world would even exist if it weren't for the yearnings of human beings and their pulsating hearts. _

_And as soon as I realized that, I picked up a pencil. I gazed at the tree whose leaves had fallen, so now it was a scraggly creature in a frozen flail, its pointed limbs climbing, reaching for the overcast sky and the precious sunlight it blocked. _

_I drew that tree. It was close to perfection, I noted with little enthusiasm. _

_I thought about L for the millionth time, how he was like that tree, all awkward and gangly, and wondered if he also reached for something he knew he could never have until the time was right. I liked that theory; him striving for something that lay out of reach, the prison bars of self control and societal oppression. For the first time in almost a year, I smiled. The carapace I was imprisoned within suddenly cracked, letting the tiniest ray of light shine in and warm my decaying soul. I felt strangely invigorated, as though the very life force of the universe had once again begun to fill my body, helping me stray from my quietly destructive path. _

_The thoughts of L implored me to start taking care of myself again, at least in any way a seven year old possibly could. _

_My smile melted away, leaving my eyes blazing and searching for something else to do to this drawing I had so pathetically tried to copy. It needed something..._

_But what?_

_I closed my eyes, letting my hand guide my consciousness, my muse taking hold of my body to give the drawing exactly what it needed. Opening my eyes, I looked down, to see a small leaf drawn onto one of the twigs. Immediately, I began to draw leaves on all of the twigs, and soon my tree looked like a bush, sprouted from nothing but a dismal blank page of off-white mockery. _

_My stare flickered. It bloomed before my eyes. _

_I had my muse back, and it returned like a gentle flutter of delicate moth wings, caressing me softly, apologetically, starving for forgiveness for being gone so long. _

_He would be gone for five more years. _

_Five more years._

_Five...more...years..._

~o~

Linda came to life one day. She was suddenly her normal self, drawing as much as she possibly could, from people to animals and not caring an inkling if they liked it or not. When the news came that L would be paying them an online visit, she tried to stem her excitement, but found that even amidst her placidity she couldn't control the feelings she harbored after hearing such a bulletin. The call would come through a laptop, and they would not be able to see his face from the other side, simply his voice and nothing more. Part of her was disappointed from such a fact, but at the same time, she was privately ecstatic from being able to have a shred of L's presence after going so long without it. He never wrote letters, or emails, for fear of having them tracked by some unknown pursuer. The announcement had everyone in an electric frenzy; the vibe all throughout the mansion had changed from the usual competitive aggression to a special anxiety, the kind that always sparked and seethed whenever L's mere person was mentioned within an exchange of intimidation tricks.

Nervousness boiled at the pit of her stomach, the acids below her gullet writhing like ravenous snakes. She smiled at this, however, knowing what it meant, how it symbolized just how L made her feel deep down even without his presence being tangible. She kept these things to herself however, portraying her exhilaration as though she were one of the other children, obsessed with L's mind, when really she was obsessed with his heart.

_Or rather, attaining his heart. _

The other children pushed past her gruffly, and yet somehow as the thirty or so of them filed into the room where the call through the laptop was, she ended up in front, the invisible string connecting her to the sleuthing genius appearing to pull them closer together. They all sat down, some crouched behind her, most crammed themselves as tightly as possible next to her, paying no mind to the fact that their elbows rudely bumped against her arms and back. Quickly tying her hair up in two auburn pigtails so that nothing would impede her view of the laptop screen, Linda glanced around quickly, subtly, to see Mello leaning nonchalantly against the wall sucking on a humongous piece of dark chocolate. Near hung back behind the small crowd, placing the pieces of his rather large puzzle together with robotic ease as always. Matt happened to be two spots away from her, his eyes glued to his hand held gaming device, paying no attention to those around him. She pondered this briefly, knowing that the three best students in the entire orphanage obviously sought to set themselves apart from the starstruck fervor of the rest of the children.

Suddenly the laptop made its usual noises of processing, and then a large letter 'L' appeared on the screen, a mysterious and coveted icon written in black pixels and curved in gothic text. The noise of students talking animatedly amongst themselves quickly extinguished, lowering into lulling murmurs before receding into an apprehensive and excited silence. She held her breath. His voice echoed through the speaker phones, and for a few moments nothing felt real. He sounded like a ghost, and yet so beautifully human. In her mind a fallen angel spoke to them all, but she bowed her head and smiled amongst herself, knowing there was something hidden in his tenors just for her. She quietly sat in the front, promptly being elbowed by surrounding children for thinking that her presence was so worthy of having a front row seat to L's virtual seminar. She was going to ask him the perfect question, finally show everyone that she was indeed L's favorite despite the number of her succession. His baritone lyrics, always so meticulously chosen from the endless treasure chest of his mind, rang through the room in pulsating intensity. As she listened to other children while they asked their queries which were littered with curiosity revolving around L's deductive and intuitive techniques, she closed her eyes slowly. Each time her lids concealed her shimmering irises, she imagined his lithe body, his smooth jaw, his fathomless eyes zeroing in on her in such invasive consideration, his lanky limbs forming peculiar shapes due to his masterful habits of a contortionist's mischief.

Her cheeks became lightly covered in a delicate blush from such provocative extensive thoughts about the corporeal form of L, before detaching herself from her reverie and noticing her heart thumping madly beneath her diminutive ribcage. He answered each question flawlessly, effortlessly, and her brows furrowed at his businesslike approach to his admirers. They were genuinely inquisitive and yet it was though he was compiling research for a bland and boring presentation.

_They are your admirers. Your soldiers. Give them what they want. Give **me **what **I **want. _

Her basin of love flowed like a clean brook, fresh and rejuvenating, straight from a spigot so passionate her small childish body could barely handle it. She listened carefully, and yet she soared back and forth between reality and her imagination, her mind aching to envision him perfectly, just the way he was, despite having only his voice to egg on her vitality. Just as her reverie was shaken off her stilts, L finished his latest statement that left the rest of the children chuckling amongst themselves.

"I try to envision the events that take place as individual elements, I can then make a note of each one, but I gain a better understanding if I combine all of these as a whole, which is why I have very bad handwriting."

Linda smiled. His delivery was bland and candid as ever. But she dwelled not upon it. She spoke, voice steady and enthusiastic.

"Can you tell me if there's something you're not good at, or maybe something you're scared of?"

_At last, L answers to me, and only me. Precious moments, precious moments. _

L repeated her question as though asking for some unneeded confirmation. "Something...I'm scared of."

Linda heard someone behind her sneer hatefully. "You dummy, L's not afraid of anything."

Resisting the urge to clap her hand over the boy's mouth, she listened intently, anticipating the wisdom, and the clues to his true persona his phrases would, no, _had to _possess. Her heart swelled.

"I suppose...I'm afraid of monsters."

Once again a flurry of laughter broke out among the orphans at such unique candor and his particularly infantile choice of an answer to Linda's question. But she knew better, oh how she knew better. His answer puzzled her, however, and so again she listened carefully to the answer he would divulge nigh.

"There are...many types of monsters in this world."

_Yes...L. Such as the one plaguing my memories. I'd love to know who it is that I have sought to forget after all these years. I cannot remember. Can you help me remember? _

"Monsters who will not show themselves and cause trouble, monsters who abduct children, monsters who devour dreams, monsters who suck blood."

A chilled silence fell upon them all at L's words. Being the greatest detective on the face of the planet and having the constant onslaught of gruesome cases always infesting his brain, they knew how serious he was about this particular speech of monsters. As Linda perfectly knew, monsters were real, and they hid behind the faces of beautiful people. But her mind, brilliant and achingly peaceful as it was, was not prepared for the answer he would soon give.

"And monsters who always tell lies. Lying monsters are a real nuisance. They are much more cunning than other monsters..."

Steadily, his strings of words flowing like a stream of smooth silver fish, his thoughts went transient once more, traveling the the cruel stepping stones of venomous truths and painful realities. It hurt her to hear him say it, and yet she said nothing to interrupt him. His answers were valuable; she thought they made her wiser, these hooks of intelligence he planted within her skin to wrench her out of the dreamland in which she stayed immersed. But her eagerness was marred by a feeling she could not name, the closest thing to it being a foreboding lack of certainty. She needed to know what he would disclose about himself, and yet she was afraid to know.

_Why do I feel this way so suddenly?_

"They pose as humans even though they have no understanding of the human heart. They eat even though they've never experienced hunger. They study even though they have no interest in academics. They seek friendship yet they do not know how to love."

Linda's brow furrowed slowly. Such a brash way to view the world, so black and white. She preferred to live in the light while L basked slowly and beautifully in the darkness. He was untouchable, but not so much the more she came to know him as the person he was, with flaws and assets, bleeding like any other human being if one pricked his finger. His words rang so true as they always did, but they stirred conflicted uncomfortable feelings within her stomach, as though he were telling a story of a nightmarish tale involving her life. Something in her past was echoed in her words, and it was so powerful she almost shed tears. But she held onto her composure, temperament physically unchanged as she remained calm. But what she heard next was something she was not properly braced for.

"If I were to encounter such a monster, I would likely be eaten by it. Because in truth..."

Her fists squeezed together so hard they almost bled. Head dipped down, trying her damnedest to understand, to comprehend, to deal with the feelings his words stimulated deep inside, his ending sentence sent the last pillar of her serenity falling to the ground.

_Don't...please don't. _

"I am that monster."

She seemed to shut down after that. For her, the rest of his words were for naught, because she was no longer coherent enough to comprehend anything else he said due to a near catatonic state that had taken over her bones, her flesh, her blood, all which writhed so passionately for him and was now deathly chilled by his harsh realities. His truths were too painful to comprehend at that moment, and she lowered her head even farther, closing herself off to the world around her and even L, her reason for existing without immense shrieking insanity. She succumbed to the void she knew was inside of her, met it, and let it overtake her for a moment, letting the pain and torturous lesions cover her heart as she burned alive on the inside, her soul begging for a quick death and for those words to go back into L's mouth and bury themselves within his abysmal mind, never to be heard from again. Such a statement hurt her. He was the monster all along, and she fell bewitched by him, fell in love with him and his forthright nature, and yet here he claimed he knew nothing about the human spirit, or the human heart, despite his apparent ability to capture her own. Even as he said his plainspoken farewells and the small crowd of children dispersed, she sat by herself, plunged into a loneliness she had built just for her small being, contemplating the serious and awful meanings L's answer had possessed.

It was disgusting. Repugnant. Devastating. All of a sudden she had no idea who L was anymore, which was a withering possibility. It was as though the person she had walked with, talked with, drawn, adored, never existed at all. Now all that remained was this cold and tonus realist with a distasteful flair for administering disappointment like a readied syringe slowly inserted into soft sensitive skin. After L had signed off, the screen went blank, and the children dispersed, talking amongst themselves happily, contentedly, at how L's online visit had been. Linda found herself sitting in front of the table on which the computer had once sat, taken to an unknown location by Quillish Wammy himself, trying to envision L in person saying all of these awful things, and discovering that it literally made her sick to her stomach. She clenched her abdomen in discomfort; as a child, his fourth successor, a meaningless number to his recently uncovered frigid heart, she felt like she was worth less than nothing.

"Linda."

Near.

Out of the corner of her downtrodden gaze, she saw him stare at her, head tilted, surprisingly not bothering to hide his curiosity at her bizarre behavior.

"It's been an hour, and you're still sitting there." He remarked stoically, reaching up to play with a lock of his ashen hair, as though such communication alluded to something more than going through the motions with another person. No, this seemed serious, grave, and earnest. She knew his comprehension of emotions and sentimentality was enough to fill a teaspoon, and yet she could not help but feel relieved that someone had noticed her rather ghostly demeanor, and had the initiative to approach her about it. For she was nothing but a wraith, a phantasmal ghoul who had a knack for recreating life on a page, and no one but a certain elusive detective to truly appreciate it. And now, such facts had been turned into mere possibilities, and she could hardly stand such pragmatism.

"Were you expecting something different?" He asked, almost evasive in his query, yet penetrative all the same with his subtlety.

She considered his words, how they stuck her like pins and needles all over her skin, all over her brain, and most importantly all over her heart. Although his discernment for her feelings were impressive, he knew too much for his own good, and she simply wished to climb into a hole and never return.

"You love him."

Her hands tensed violently at such a staid approach to her feelings. For the first time since she could remember, anger flared up within her at his soft accusation, spite climbing into her throat and creating words she normally would not dare to utter out loud. He was _Near_, what did _he _know about love?

"Or at least, you loved him once. You've been upset by his words." Near continued, staring at her, analyzing her, dissecting her.

"Near." Linda said through gritted teeth, for the first time feeling an immense dislike towards the boy whose presence she once held a great appreciation for, and now she wanted nothing more than for him to disappear and leave her to mourn.

"What is it Linda?" He said, seemingly taunting her, coaxing the answer out of her like an artful pied piper.

Linda stood, her stare blazing in anger and passionate dislike, challenging his stoicism and indifference with raw emotion. She approached him, glaring at him, trying to enforce some of the worthlessness she currently felt upon him so that he would truly understand the pain of tarnished love.

"You know absolutely _nothing _about love." She hissed.

And she left, cursed to contemplate L's words a hundred, no, a thousand times over, trying to decipher what they meant, if they were the truth, if they were lies, whether or not they were even real or a corrupt deceitful trick her mind had cruelly cooked up for her to jar her loose from her optimistic reservation. Oh sure, there were two halves of her consciousness on her shoulders, hovering aimlessly, just as emotionally exhausted as she was, whispering advice into her ears, one of them telling her to be the spiteful shrew she yearned to be. The other whispered tiredly, but gently into the shell of her ear, telling her to accept such truths, telling her to swallow the ugliness, to digest it, to let it pass throughout her body as it raked its hideous spikes against her throbbing insides, because this, the torturous method, was also the right course of action. The one she loved had practically rejected her, whether he meant to or not, and she felt herself overcome with feelings and sensation that no one her age had the capacity to experience. She went outside, where the air was fresh and yet it did nothing to pacify the raging sentiments inside of her. Suddenly she breathed, and smelled the pungent scent of cigarette smoke. Her brow furrowed, for despite the anger she harbored, she was also curious. Nobody smoked at Wammy's house as far as she knew, and so she followed the smell, happenstance grinning a wicked glow upon her once again as she somberly stumbled across Matt, adorned with a faux fur vest and torn blue jeans, holding a cigarette delicately between two fingers, and eventually bringing it up to his lips. He gave her a quick side glance, but didn't speak to her immediately. She simply stared at him, overcome by the site of the red haired youth for an unknown reason. He finally spoke, sympathy radiating from the depths of his throat, and yet a faint air of 'you should know better' thrown into the mix. It was as though he knew what was wrong before she had even opened her mouth, and knowing this, she felt afraid of what might come out of his wise and intellectually succulent mouth. He was the third successor, one step above her diminutive social stature of Wammy's, so anything he had to say was to be taken with great seriousness, even though he actually had somewhat of a sense of humor. The interesting element about Matt was that he was an underachiever, the one who hardly tried and yet managed to become the third successor. He had a human wisdom that Linda had always been drawn to, and so when he took one last drag of his cigarette and flicked it on the cobblestone ground beneath them, he opened his mouth to speak, and she listened carefully.

"What is going on between you and L?" He asked plainly.

"N-nothing, he's simply my friend. Isn't he yours as well?" Linda replied, her voice shaking.

Matt chuckled darkly, biting his lip and looking elsewhere for but a moment before his gaze settled upon her once again. "No, I can't say that he is."

He approached her, became closer to her, looked down at her childish form that he dwarfed with his own adolescent height. "But you feel something more for him. More than the rest of us. Yeah we're all obsessed with becoming him, but you're different. You don't want to _be _him, you want to be _with _him."

He hit the nail on the head so perfectly that she felt tears rising and threatening to fall from the bottom rims of her eyelids. "No...you're wrong."

"Linda." Matt said with a touch of sympathy in his tenor. "We're all monsters in our own right. L was making a point in that, to let us know that there's always a thin line between sin and virtue. We have the choice of falling into our own insanity, or to climb the latter to a better place. That's all L had said. You're taking things out of context."

He knew too much. He _knew _too much.

"So then." Linda swallowed audibly. "Which side did L choose?"

Matt looked taken aback for but a moment, before his controlled state once again made an appearance upon his face. "I don't know. I honestly don't know. He fights for justice, he says, and everyone else says that too. But..."

Linda egged him on. "You can sense it too."

The air around them rustled the trees at the edge of the Wammy property, ruffling their hair in crazy shapes and adding a stunned dread to the already pregnant pause. However it wasn't long until Matt merely shrugged, fumbling around his pockets for a lighter and another cigarette.

"It doesn't really matter what we think, Linda. He is who he is, he is what he is, and he's brilliant."

_It doesn't matter what I think?_

"He said I was special." She said, looking elsewhere, brows knitting together and lips pursing tightly against one another.

"We're all special." Matt said flippantly, as though the statement really meant nothing at all, and he exhaled an acrid puff of smoke. The breeze carried the cloud of nicotine right into her face, and yet she did nothing to display any reaction.

He said nothing more. And so neither did Linda. Like a zombie, she left the scene, not even remembering

Linda laid in her bed, running a pencil without aim across the plane of her sketchbook, and soon the entire page was covered with childish scribbles that had no meaning or taste. She was lost in her thoughts, thoughts that begged the answer to a question.

_Was he telling the truth?_

L was masterful and deceit, and yet his claims about being a monster instead of human were so devastating to her that they rendered her cold and in shock. She loved him so desperately, so despairingly, so deeply, so profoundly, that the thought of him renouncing his humanity, his emotions, his feelings, the sensations that he had to have been born with, was a lurid and bitterly arresting notion.

She fell asleep, her drawings nestled in the confines of her crossed arms. And her dreams were not kind to her.

_WHY._

_WHY._

_WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO ME. _

_WHY HAVE I BEEN INFLICTED WITH SUCH STUPIDITY. _

_SCREAMING. CANT STOP SCREAMING._

_CANT STOP LOVING HIM._

_DON'T DO THIS TO ME. DON'T DO THIS TO ME. YOU CANT DENY WHAT YOU FEEL. YOU CANT DENY WHAT YOU ARE. YOU HAVE TO BE HUMAN. YOU'RE NOT A MONSTER._

_YOU'RE. NOT. A. MONSTER. _

_YOU CANT BE. _

_YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO TREATED ME LIKE I WAS WORTH SOMETHING._

_WORTH SOMETHING MORE THAN THE DIRT PEOPLE WALKED ON._

_WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME._

_WHY MUST MY LOVE FOR YOU BE A SHAM._

_WHY MUST YOU DENY THAT YOU EVER FELT ANYTHING FOR ME. _

_WHY._

_WHY._

_WHY..._

_Why..._

_W...h...y..._

Like ravenous dragons hungry for the lush flays of skin wrapping her body of fragile meat and ivory bone, her own mind ravaged itself for hours, and yet she didn't wake up once. She simply laid there, asleep, dead to all the worlds in the universe besides her own, which quaked like a trembling organ beating frantically, deliriously trying to pump enough blood to her brain to pull her away from the frostbitten hell she had created for herself within the confines of her quivering mental prison. So faded the scene of a bitterly disappointed girl who could not handle even the slightest bit of rejection. Never had she faced this. Never had she built up a skin thick enough for this.

Little did she know the indirect cause for her nightmares had stepped out of his limousine, barefooted amidst the familiarity of his truest home. L emerged, his form silhouetted by the gentle ashen glow of the moon shining vaguely off the surface of his back's unique curvature.

But Linda was far more in tune than she ever knew she could be. She opened her eyes, suddenly wide awake, as though she sensed something elsewhere, something elusive, something miraculous.

He was home.

And she had waited for him.

_It cant be..._


End file.
